Going History
by Soshika
Summary: the story of what happens to Zack and Cloud in the Shinra mansion, from Zack's POV. Very light ZxC warning. PG 13 for language and mind-frags [chapter 14 up. crazy jenova stuff.]
1. Introduction

GOING HISTORY   
  
  
It's ice cold in this place, worse than anywhere up north. Jesus, you'd think if they were going to dunk us into something, they'd at least make it body tempurature first...Nah, no point in that. It's cold like this every time, really. You can't see out through the glass very well either, it's bent around and distorts everything. Besides that there isn't much to see. A lot of books and dark, most of the time. They leave us floating here for a while at a time...You can't tell if anyone's coming either. I don't know how many feet underground we are, or even for certain where. I thought we were in the basement of Shinra mansion, but there's enough space that I might even believe we're burrowed across the world, hidden away somewhere under Costa del Sol.   
  
When the lights come on, it's always a shock. It burns like hell and the glow sent out from the tanks gets even worse. He doesn't even talk anymore. Hell, he doesn't even scratch on the sides of the glass. I can barely make him out in the dark, just a light sillouette. Maybe I could last longer here...but not him. If we're going to get out, it's got to be soon.   
  
There's a light moving in the hall. Someone's coming.


	2. Chapter 1

FOUR MONTHS AGO   
  
"So you were really set on joining SOLDIER, huh?" The truck was shaking us all up pretty roughly inside, but me and the blonde guy managed to get towards the end next to the cabin. Shaking wasn't so bad there. I don't know what brought him so far to the back of the truck, the other guys were all hunched together towards the tailgate. The sun managed to scrape itself through the little holes in the fabric over the top of the truck, speckling across them. They all looked like animals in the jungle, crouched down and snarling over a kill. Or something like that.   
  
I didn't know much about the blonde guy...He kept to himself, he hardly ever spoke, and when he did it was fairly concise. One of the types who you knew was always eating lunch alone when he was a kid. I don't mean in the courtyard under a tree. I mean he had a whole table to himself, because the other kids were scared to death of him. Yeah, there was deffinitly something not right about him. Probobly why he didn't make it into SOLDIER, and was just a guard. I did know his name though, but it was hard to remember. Hell, I had to know everyone's name, but the only really important guy was Sephiroth. He was the reason all these guards were tagging along, riding in the back of a covered pickup where the spots of sun moved like scared bugs away from us. The reason iI/i was in the back of this truck. I guess I was supposed to be the right hand man. Huh, sure thing I thought, running a hand over my hair. That's why I was back here with the rest of the grunts. I unslung my buster from my shoulders and planted it in the wooden deck of the truck in front of me, draping my arms over the top, crossed. What iwas/i the blonde guy's name?   
  
My stomach growled, loud enough for the blonde guy to look at me. I looked down and blinked. How the hell was I supposed to remember names when I was ihungry/i too? I wasn't even sure where we were going, and now I had to worry about when we were going to get something to-   
  
"You're hungry, huh?"   
  
I jerked my head away from the back of the truck where I'd been resting it, but the truck also chose that exact moment to go over a bump in the road. iThwack/i. DAMNIT! I'd meant to be surprised, not face-first into the flat of the buster. I shook my head and pulled back, staring at the blonde guy. Strife, hey, that was it. I smiled at him and shrugged. Cloud Strife. "Yeah, guess I slept through breakfast." This was the first time he'd tried to make conversation with ianyone/i, so near as I knew.   
  
So cool, I was the first. I smiled again.   
  
This time Cloud even smiled back, which probobly would have shocked me again, if I wasn't so ihungry/i. He brushed one of the bangs out of his eyes and spoke again. He was real soft, the kind of guy who expects to be interupted so when he does talk, he makes it a point to be intimidating in that weird...unspoken way. Kind of like Sephiroth, only not nearly as confident. Now that I thought about it, their build was kinda similar too. "Me too."   
  
Maybe it would have struck me wierd that he used so few words but that kind of thing didn't bother me usually, which was ever, which was at all. So I kept talking. Hey, it was better than being silent staring at all the other guys. Wait, I did know where we were going. Augh, too many names all at once. "Maybe we can get somethin to eat once we're in Nibelheim. I mean there's gotta be food someplace, right? I think we're all pretty hungry-"   
  
"I didn't answer your first question." Cloud was watching me kind of like a little kid watches its older brother. It was sorta weird, because it wasn't completely like that. More like the looks I get from some igirls/i. First question? Oh yeah. About SOLDIER. I waved a hand and dropped the buster down on its flat in my lap, reaching my arms back and folding them behind my head. I wasn't so curious so much as I had been trying to make conversation. He cocked his head, the light bangs delayed but still falling across his forehead. The guard uniforms looked weird on this guy, and that's all I'm saying to it. "Aren't you annoyed?"   
  
I grinned at him again. "Wow, and they told me you never said more than two words. Nah, only three things annoy me." I took one of my hands from behind my head and held up fingers, dropping them down while I talked. I could see the kid with one eye closed now, I was tired anyway. "Haircuts, customs control and people who don't know when it's time to run." Honestly I'd made those up on the spot, I probobly had a lot more things that annoyed me, but those were the first three to mind. iAugh/i I was hungry. Maybe if I got to sleep for a while the hunger'd subside. Cloud just watched me with those confused eyes again, and I could swear he started blushing whenever I talked to him. Maybe not, maybe that was the light-flecks messing with my eyes.   
  
Cloud looked down at his hands, and about that time I dropped my hand back behind my head and shut my eyes. He came off as having the build for SOLDIER, so it really musta been psychological grounds he got rejected on. Me, I was just there because it was something I knew I'd be good at. It wasn't so hard, being a glorified grunt. Hey, at least you went places. Staying in one place too long was never for me anyway. Maybe someday I'd find myself someplace I felt like staying. But that wasn't likely. Anyone who signed into SOLDIER had some reason to keep moving. Maybe Cloud had a reason, I wasn't sure, and I was thinking that right up until he asked-   
  
"...What's your name?" He asked it like I'd just asked his. I blinked my eyes open and saw he wasn't looking at me anymore, but down at his hands, where he twisted the hem of his shirt. He sure was nervous. More cut out for the tactics than the fighting the way he was acting. I blinked again and smiled, nodding forward.   
  
"Zack." I leaned back a moment, thinking over in my head how this guy seemed so outta place with the guards. The one advantage for me of being in SOLDIER is that wherever you went, you had the luxery of being as alone as you wanted. For someone like me who liked to sleep late, be nice and be antisocial at the same time, that worked out real good. For some reason people really respect the hell out of you when you never hang around em, but youre real nice to em. It's like when you're not there, some sort of cultivated hero-worship takes place. I don't really mind that, just so long as they don't start tagging after me. I'm no good with pets, especially ones who follow you around. This kid seemed though like he could benifit from being in SOLDIER...the oportunity to be an accepted outsider might do him good. I sat up and leaned forward, looking up towards the top of the truck's canopy. The flecks of light coming down left blotches in my eyes, but it was better than staring at the inside... "Hey, if you're still interested in going into SOLDIER, I could help you study up for it. Being the nice guy that I am." I tossed Cloud another grin.   
  
The bangs bounced as he snapped his head up to look at me. There was some serious shock in his eyes. "You'd really help me join SOLDIER?"   
  
Taking in air before talking this time, I sort of rolled my eyes back upwards. I wasn't what you would call the best person with book work and studying, and a lot of SOLDIER was that. I'd barely made it through, and ever since then I'd become sort of attatched to falling dead asleep in the middle of any book that didn't have pictures. So it was questionable if I could help him there, but with training and rules and stuff like that, I figured I could do him some good. "Weeeeeeell the next time you could take the exam isn't til next month, so we'll hafta wait til after this mission, but sure." I gave a short laugh. I did that a lot when I knew I couldn't do something...like say, for example, help study books. "But you gotta handle the research work yourself, hard information and this member of SOLDIER don't mix."   
  
This time even Cloud laughed a little, looking back down at his hands and slouching slightly against the sides of the truck. Guess he had the same idea about hunger that I did. "No problem."   
  
The guys on the other end of the truck started shouting louder about something, and watching Cloud shut his eyes, it made me kinda remember before I was in SOLDIER. I was a lot like him, only a lot less...uhm...blonde. And I didn't have that aura of snapping at any second, that was for sure. But he seemed like a nice kid. And he sure as hell seemed more interesting than the rest of them. Arching back my head, I barked at them. "Yo, pipe down, Strife's tryin to sleep over here."   
  
For a minute he stared at me again, but the guys got him looking their way when they shouted back. "Yeah, right, sure thing Zack," and kept right on laughing. I pulled a scowl and unsnapped one of the wrist guards I wore as a part of my SOLDIER uniform and held it out in front of my face. Nice thing, nice and heavy anyway. Snapping it back up, I lobbed it at the back of one of the guards heads. Cloud blinked once and shook his head in disbelief, and the other shaken head got the rest of them to shut up right away.   
  
"I said pipe down," I reiterated with a smirk, folding my arms back behind my head and shutting my eyes. If Cloud Strife thanked me, I didn't hear him. I hated being hungry.


	3. Chapter 2

Everyone woke up pretty dramaticly, at least I know I did, because the truck hit a real abrupt stop and we all went sliding across the wooden planks into the back of the cabin. Good thing the buster was in my lap, it coulda killed someone the way they were all careening around. At least this way it just slammed me in the stomach and rolled whoever had come sliding my way across me and into a corner. I shook my head and put a hand against it, probobly the only one who hadn't been given a splintered ass by the lovely streak across the wooden truckbed. A sharp slam into my side took me off balance and I fell, whipping around to find out who felt like I made a good pillow.   
  
Cloud was already sitting up and rubbing the back of his head, not really bothering to see exactly who it was he'd used to break his slide. I might have said something if I wasn't too busy trying to keep from accidentally cutting a peice of someone off that they might need and slinging my buster back where it belonged at the same time. Wait, wasn't I supposed to be the senior officer back here, or something like that? I toed Cloud with my boot and put my hands on my hips, looking at the moaning and congealing group of guards in the back of the truck with me. Ooo this was gonna be fun. I tried to keep from smiling too widely since I saw the blonde watching me from the corner of my eye. Better try not to creep him out, since I was the first person he talked to in...what, since he started training? He was using those wide eyes again, something like the hero-worship the really young recruits had but not quite. Deffinitly something different about it, and for some reason it didn't bother me the way I had the feeling it should.   
  
"Had a nice nap, right guys? Sorry to wake you all so rudely but time to head out!" I finished off the last sentance by picking up one of the other guards by his midsection and making a dash to the truck's tailgate. Through the cloth covering and over the gate he sailed, letting out a scream that was somewhere on the boarder of terror, but not quite. I turned around to make like I was coming after the others, but they were already up and making like it was going to be a fight. Three or four of them came at me and weighted me down to the truck bed before I shook them and rolled away, grabbing the nearest in a headlock and staggering around the truck with him like that before trying to throw him out the back. Something didn't go quite my way though, and on the way out he caught the tail of my shirt and off balance I went, tripping over the gate, and landing on my back in a way that probobly wouldn't have been so painful if I didn't have a peice of metal the size of a plane propeller strapped to my back. iOW/i. I started laughing, so did the guy that threw me, and the others poked their heads out from behind the flaps of fabric.   
  
"Right, whatever you say iboss/i Zack," One of them shook his head and smirked before showing me up completely by ever so gracefully departing the back of the truck and folding his arms when he hit the ground. The others followed in suite, but for some reason Cloud lagged behind, just peeking from behind the cloth. Definitly shy, or paranoid, or something like that. Nevermind, I'd try to figure out what went on in his head when we both had time to later on. Right now the big problem was getting back to my feet before Sephiroth came...which wasn't too hard, at least.   
  
Dusting off my ass, I took a good look around. Well, we were in the plains. Sure, the Nibelheim mountains were visable, but they were quite a ways off. The town itself was in walking distance, at least. A pretty long hike, but still. Huh. Well there had to be isome/i reason we were all the way out here. Oh waaaaait, I remember...We were entering the town on foot so we didn't stir the locals up too bad. Turning towards the guards, I tried to get back into the whole commanding-officer thing. It doesn't work too well if you've just been thrown out of a truck by one of them, let me tell you. Oh well, at least I gave it an effort. "Right, we're to proceed into Nibelheim on foot, and act like civilized people. You iare/i reprisenting Shinra, you know. We'll be meeting with Sephiroth here in a few, he'll lead us in." A hand went up from one of them. Jokers in blue uniforms, but I guess I'm not much better. I bent at the hips and exaggerated an interest, smiling about as sweet as a cat must when it's found a peice of moving string. "Yeeeeeees?"   
  
Smirking and trying to act like he knew what he was talking about, the guard put his fists on his hips and smirked. I sensed some sort of mimicry going on here. "When do we eat?"   
  
The amount that these guys set them up was what made me have to enjoy travelling with them. It really did. I took an even stride over to him, looking more like a Cheshire than I did a man. I threw my arm around his neck, leaned heavily on him and started talking. The others were already laughing, but that sort of nervous what-is-he-gonna-do-now type of laugh. "Why, don't you know? You're trained to survive out here without food, so what else do you think you're gonna do? There's plenty to eat..." I unslung my arm from his shoulder and gave him a pat on the back, walking with over emphisized slowness away. For a minute I could almost feel the confusion. That was before I wheeled around and tackled him down from behind, one hand on the back of his head, sitting in the small of his back and grinding his nose into the soft dirt where the truck tires had uprooted earth. "If you like idirt/i!" I was laughing hard enough I barely got it out.   
  
The guy I was currently torturing the hell out of probobly would have managed to throw me or kick me or do something to turn the fight around, but it was that exact moment that Sephiroth chose to pull up in the little jeep he was taking. Unfortunately I didn't know this, and I was too busy trying to get my guy to say something completely humiliating to really notice that the other guards had fallen silent as rocks. All except Cloud, he was like a rock anyway. A rock that constantly stared and blushed. I think I finally figured out Sephiroth was here right about the time a tall longhaired shadow decided it was going to sit on top of me. Good thing shadows don't weigh much, or the guy under me might have really been in pain. I looked up. Yep, right about here I figured out it was Sephiroth.   
  
When you look up and you see someone with long white hair and ice chip eyes dressed all in black glaring down at you, and they're not a woman, your instant reaction is always a little random. In fact, it's completely random. Improv one might go so far as to say, especially with Sephiroth. In this particular case, I wound up just raising one hand and smiling. "Hello."   
  
If anyone is more quiet than Cloud is, it's Sephiroth, except he doesn't do the whole blushing nervous shirt wringing thing. He eminates this sureness, like he's above feeling nervous. This is a guy who knows he's good. Or bad. Or something like that, don't look at me, I said I hated words. Didn't I? In any case, Sephiroth loomed over me for a while before beckoning that I get up and join him. Which I did, much to the relief of the guy I was sitting on. I semi hop-skipped after the already moving Sephiroth, who only had to mutter a word to hold the other guards in place. Jeez, talk about an aura of control. Cloud's eyes peeked around the edge of the flap as we went by again, dark blue and watching with a completely undeniable intensity. I couldn't tell right there if he was watching me or Sephiroth. Man, I felt like an older brother or a big tough best friend or something. Note to self- teach him to fight on his own first thing.   
  
For someone wearing god knows how many tons of black under the midday sun, Sephiroth moved like nothing was the matter. Maybe the white hair helped, I can't say. With something like a florish that seemed unnatural, he leapt back into the jeep and took the passenger side. I planted one foot on the tire and bounded into the driver seat, leaning back as soon as I got situated. "So what's the deal, Seph? Are we gonna-"   
  
There is probobly only one guy in this world who currently can wave his hand and shut me up on a whim, and that'd be Sephiroth. I haven't known him that well, but the last few days of training he was there. Some sort of refresh course, or something like that. I'm not quite sure iwho/i Sephiroth is, just that he's been through SOLDIER once and his father was a hotshot in Shinra. A turk or something like that, or at least that's the rumor. He doesn't talk about his family, and we don't ask. It's sort of a common curtousy extended to anyone in SOLDIER. Like myself. But I don't feel like going there at this point in time. Sephiroth's ice eyes were focused ahead at the truck, not looking at me in the least. I blinked a bit in confusion before he finally started speaking. Sephiroth has a very low voice...Like the way people get when they're very angry, but talking very softly. There's no anger with this guy though, it's very peculiar. It's like he's above anger. Hey, he might be, how should I know. "You really should stop beating up on the Guards, Zack, that sword is heavier than you realize."   
  
I looked skyward and scratched my cheek at that, sort of my way of attempting not to look sheepish while I'm doing exactly that at the same time. Sephiroth gave one of his fleeting smirks towards me as I did that. "Oh yeah...Must've forgotten about that. I'm so used to carrying it around you know-"   
  
Sephiroth nodded his head, which for some magically weird reason cut me off iagain/i. At least this time he was talking about Nibelheim and not the fact that I was having a little fun at the expense of a few bored guards. "We'll camp here for the night and move in on foot in the morning. We should reach it by dusk, and enter the mansion not long after. I want you and the guards to remain outside."   
  
"Remind me again why we're doin this? I forgot."   
  
"You'd forget your sword if it wasn't your full height," Sephiroth smirked again. See, he really was a nice guy, just kinda quiet and weird, a lot like Cloud. Cloud with a few more cards in his deck, if you catch my drift. And I was still hungry. Sephiroth better have brought food. "There's some research taking place at Shinra that I think it would be best if I took a closer look at...It's a potentially dangerous use of mako energy."   
  
I folded my arms behind my head and yawned, kicking my boots up onto the steering wheel. I could hear the grass ripping under the tires as they grudgingly turned just a little under pressure. Sephiroth was always a little bent out of shape about mako, where it came from, what it did. I couldn't really get myself so worked up. As members of SOLDIER we'd both been infused with it, which had hurt like hell. A long series of injections and a lot of hospital monitering time goes into it, and when you're done it's so blaitently obvious it's been done. I'm not sure really what it does, other than allow for a sort of unity. When people infused with Mako get closeby, we all feel a sort of collective awareness. It's not too unusual for Sephiroth to pick up on my thoughts before I say them, or me to comment on something he didn't say out loud. It probobly should bother me, but it doesn't. I'm not too concerned with stuff like that. You know, maybe one of these days I should worry about these things. "So this is another trip to make sure mako's not being messed with?"   
  
Sephiroth's eyes were cold normally, but this time I actually cringed away when he looked at me. There was something deffinitly not right with that look, and I was used to weird looks, especially from Sephiroth. "Don't think so lightly of that which makes us, our very being. Mako holds our world together." Without another word, he exited the car silently and started walking back towards the truck. I watched him go, still in half jump-cringe. Man...One thing you gotta say about Sephiroth...he takes some stuff far far too seriously. Leaning back again, I puffed air at my thin bangs and stared at the cloud-dotted sky. "Sometimes you gotta laugh, Seph."


	4. Chapter 3

"Zack...Zack!"   
  
Waking up is not what I'm best at. Whoever was calling me, or shaking me, or whatever they were doing, I just rolled onto my stomach and grunted. I was supposed to have the tent theoreticly to myself, so whoever was in here didn't belong here. And since they didn't belong here, they'd eventually go away, right? I folded my arms under my cheek and yawned once, still not opening my eyes. I'd been having a real nice dream, I'd drempt I'd found an island that nobody'd ever been on before. Had the whole place to myself, to explore and head across. There was someone else in the dream, one of those dream friends you're sure you know in real life but you can't put your finger on who it really is. It's not really important, I guess, it was just a nice dream. And I was ready to go back to it, oh yes.   
  
There it was again, that shaking and talking and whole come-back-to-wakefulness thing. Whoever this was wasn't ready to give up so easily, I guess. I played dead again while they kept talking to the back of my head. "Come on Zack, please, help me study now, tell me anything, please..."   
  
Oooooh riiiight...It must be Cloud then, he was the only one who would actually want me to help him study. Anybody else would have to be absolutely nuts. Besides, not anybody else really wanted to join SOLDIER in this group. Okay, maybe then I'd have to get up. If I didn't, he might go into some sort of angsty withdrawl thing and not talk to me again. Arg, but it was such a inice/i dream...I started to open my eyes and move around slightly, and Cloud chose that exact time to put his ice cold hands on my very bare upper arms. OH GOD THE COLD THE COLD AUGH!   
  
Well no point in going back to sleep NOW that I was halfway on the other side of the tent, finishing up a flailing fit and practicly squashing the little blonde guy. Sometimes it really is astounding how in such a short amount of time you can find yourself in a very shocked half awake pile with someone you hardly know. But that's okay, you know, so long as you trust them. Come to think of it now, Cloud might have been the person in my dream. It would sort of make sense, in a bizzare Cloud-like way. He invaded my dream to follow me and then invaded my awakeness to get me to help him out. I just made absolutely no sense. And I was still sitting on top of him. Oh wait! The buster sword! Oh crap...I rolled off Cloud about as quickly as you can when you sleep with a massive sword on your back and you've just been woke up by very very very cold hands. I'm talking Sephiroth-eye cold here. Well maybe my landing on top of him fixed that.   
  
Cloud was straightening up now onto his knees and shaking his head, looking pretty confused. I guess for most people it would have been pitch black in the tent but I had two advantages...One was Cloud's flashlight he'd brought with him and the other, was, of course, Mako eyes. When you get drenched in Mako, you go a little crazy at first, because you're not used to being opened up to this little well of information you'll never understand. For some reason, though, the whole process of mako infusion leaves you with eyes that glow faintly no matter where you are or when. I guess the first SOLDIERs were scared of it, but now it's a fairly common sight around the world. It helped see in the dark, if nothing else. Cloud was caught in his own flashlight beam, sillouetted like a actor on a stage against the side of my tent. He put a hand to his forehead and looked confused. Damn, I hope I didn't brain damage the guy or anything. Sephiroth was probobly right, the buster sword was just a ilittle/i heavy to someone not used to its weight. "Hey, you okay now?"   
  
Sitting back on his folded knees pretty heavily, Cloud kept rubbing at his head. His other hand wandered over his arms and stomach, checking for cuts from my buster I guess. I didn't think he'd been scratched up, but the flashlight distortion made it kinda hard to tell. When Cloud did answer, his voice was sort of shaken and far away, like someone coming out of shock. Actually, it wasn't ilike/i someone coming out of shock, it iwas/i someone coming out of shock. Memo to self- I am not a skinny teenager anymore. "Y...yes..."   
  
I smiled and sat back, folding my feet together in front of me and holding onto my toes. Great, he wasn't hurt. Maybe a little shaken or squished, but not hurt at least. Despite the fact that he was still staring kind of blankly into space, and that he'd woken me up from a very. very. nice. dream...I wasn't mad. Maybe the dream actually meant something, though it wasn't likely, cause they almost never did, but if it did, it was a better idea I be awake and talking to Cloud, right? At least I thought so at the time. "So, what do you need?"   
  
Cloud blinked and looked at me, finally pulling back and sitting like a normal human. He looked genuinely confused, and was blushing again. How did he make it this far if every time someone was nice to him he locked up like a little girl? I cocked my head before he had a chance to speak again and tried to get a better look at his face, but Cloud looked away imidiately. Huh, talk about jittery. He put a hand to his face when he talked, nearly covering his mouth. Kinda hard to hear him when he mumbled through his hand, but I made it out. "Need...?"   
  
At least he was talking again. Smiling, I reached my arms back behind my head and stretched with my elbows in the air. I had no idea what time it was, or how long this was going to take, and it didn't really matter. I could carry on one sided conversations if I needed to, especially with a little input on the other side. "Yeah, well you wouldn't have come in here in the dark unless something important was going on, right? Must be cold out there, man, your hands are like ice. Is there something going on you need help with, cause it must be pretty late. Do you know what time it is anyway?" Cloud slowly shook his head and blinked, the flashlight reflecting on the darks of his pupils as he watched me from the corner of his eye. "Oh well, doesn't really matter, right? The other guys didn't freak out and kick you out of the tent, did they? Someone's gonna get it if that's what the situation was." I paused a minute to think back to the original train of thought I had going. I knew it involved the reason he was in here, and I probobly would have known why that was, but unfortunately my brain sleeps a few more hours than my body after I wake up. "So anyway, what iwas/i it you needed?"   
  
If it was at all possiable for a guy at the most two years younger than me to sound timid, Cloud managed to pull that off with intense skill. He dropped his hands finally but he was so quiet it was like he was afraid someone was going to walk by and catch us or something. Whoa, maybe he had nosey parents growing up, always listening at the door during sleepovers. I wonder if Cloud ever really had a sleepover, or if he was completely outcaste. "I was hoping...it's kind of an awkward hour, but if you would help me study for SOLDIER..."   
  
I flopped backwards onto the ground with a light slap to my own forehead, the buster clanking under me and flattening out into its own little portable cot of a self as I hit the ground. "Jesus, that's all Cloud? I'd help if I could, but I really don't have any of the books or any stuff like that, you know? Besides, it's not something that studying up in the middle of the night is really going to help. At leas t that's what I learned when I was studying for it. You forget it all by morning."   
  
"I don't need to know everything," Cloud's voice picked up kind of abruptly, like he was getting wound up over something I'd said. I could hear him shuffle across the nylon floor of the tent and when I moved the part of my arm that was blocking my view, I could see he was crawling closer. Maybe that should bug me, but it didn't. I mean it wasn't like Cloud was someone I considered dangerous. He acted more like he might jump and run off if iI/i moved than anything. So when he tucked his feet under him and leaned on one arm next to me I didn't really do anything but look back up at the ceiling. Anything to calm him down and make him feel at home, right? At least I thought so. "I just want a few tips, hints, anything..." I could hear Cloud moving his hands around like he was looking for something to do with them, but couldn't find anything nearby. Maybe he should carry papers with him just to rustle them. He sure was nervous around me. That was a pretty sharp contrast from his withdrawn attitude towards everyone else. "Just...anything you can tell me..."   
  
I moved a hand to scratch the back of my head. We'd been on the road, or fields, or whathaveyou for a few days now and I hadn't had time to wash exactly. When you've got long hair, that can be a kind of a problem. I was a little used to the feeling but it still felt itchy at times so I still scratched. "Can you think of something more specific than that? I mean there's a lot of little details that jump to mind, and not all of em really connect. Like do you want to know rules, or training or something? That's pretty boring standard stuff, personally. It's probobly the most drug-out part of training-"   
  
"What's it like?" I blinked twice when I realized Cloud had not only just interupted me the same way Sephiroth did, but he'd sounded excited. Now that was a new one on me. I'd heard stoic, deadpan, emotionless and nervous out of this guy, but excited had me doing a double take at him. Hello double shock, he was actually looking me in the eye. He had very pale blue irises, almost like Sephiroth's eyes, only a little less...uhm...planned out, I want to say, but how can you plan out your eyes? Cloud was talking faster now anyway, darting his eyes back and forth across the tent, maybe indicating stuff that wasn't there, like my experiences filled up the room with invisable peices of furniture. Wow, what a weird thought. I could be lying on my childhood. No, wait, that was just the buster. "To just ...be one of them, to have mako inside you, to wander around from town to town and have everyone know...even if you don't want them to, what's it like to be-"   
  
I started laughing out loud and accidentally cut him off. Cloud actually drew back slightly and brought a half-clenched fist to his lips again, and started blushing again. I shook my head and managed to shut myself up, staring up still. "It's not that much different than being the tough kid nobody'll play with in school, you're still an outsider." I rolled my head to the side and looked up at him, grinning. The colour across his face started to fade again as he looked down at me. I kept explaining. "You have the power to beat up just about anyone you want when you're in SOLDIER, but that scares off a lot of people. They also start thinking you're above them, so you wind up wandering around prettymuch on your own. If you're not used to that anyway, that is. Sephiroth for instance, take him. I don't think you could convince him to make best friends with anyone if the fate of the world depended on it. But guys like me, we like to have someone to talk to from time to time."   
  
"You can always talk with me, Zack," Cloud's voice seemed to have jumped out of his throat and he pulled back and looked down almost imidiately in response. Shocked or ashamed or something at what he'd just said, he sure seemed silently sorry. He'd probobly intended to keep that thought inside. Jesus he sure was a closed book. I flopped a hand over and patted his knee and smiled back at the top of the tent. His head jolted upwards and the red started to spread across his cheeks again but I was starting to get used to that. Frankly, I was starting to enjoy the company of a blushing Cloud to any one of those blushing giggly teenage girls, and by a long long shot.   
  
"I'd rather be talking to you than one of the other guards anyway, Cloud," I glanced from the corner of my eye at him again. He seemed sort of transfixed or in a state of shock. "At least you've got common sense enough to iwant/i to talk. The rest of them just wanna joke around. Which is fine, but life's not all joking, and sometimes you got something more important to say. Anyway, that's the other thing about SOLDIER. You get shuffled from one outfit to another. Like two months from now? I'll be with another group, probobly never see you or the other guys ever again. So you try to develop disposable friends, but I'm not the kind of person who just drops friends and moves on, you see what I mean?" I blinked at him and he nodded slowly. When I kept talking, he slowly lowered down onto the floor of the tent and lay on his stomach, head resting on folded arms watching me. Skittish little blonde guy, hanging on my every word. Why wasn't I creeped out by this? Eh. "Know...at this point it's you I'm more worried about. You don't get along real well with the other guys, and guards sort of need to form cliques. You'd actually be better off in SOLDIER."   
  
Cloud's voice was more released and quiet than before, but not so much nervous. "I don't think I'd get along well there either..."   
  
I made a piffing sound between my lips and half-heartedly dropped a fist onto the top of his head. Cloud winced a moment while my fist rested in the nest of blonde hair before opening his eyes and smiling slightly. Bringing my hand back behind my head I kept talking. "It's not like you're going to be ialone/i, Cloud. I'm not going to leave you wandering around by yourself, especially after Mako. It can mess you up, that stuff. Some people are even allergic to it. Considering the amount used on SOLDIERs nearly posions us, it's not something you do without planning for the aftermath. Mako makes you see things, stuff you'll never really understand in the corners of your head you kept dark and never walked into. Unless someone's there through the whole thing keeping you straightened out, you can go really crazy. It's one of those times you really gotta trust who you're with not to mess with your brain. I guess you don't know anyone else who'd stick with you through that, so once you're in, I'll take some time off and help you through training. Yeah, that makes sense. Fact, let's talk to Sephiroth tomorrow. If anyone can get your foot in the door, it's him. What d'ya say, Cloud?" I looked over at him again, but it figured I wasn't getting a response. His eyes were shut and he seemed pretty dug down for the night. Smirking, I turned back towards the top of the tent and shook my head. I stretched once, hands behind my head, and closed my eyes.


	5. Chapter 4

What the-? What the hell? Who? I woke up looking around in that state of shock you get when you forget where you fell asleep and just got touched. Scratch that, I wasn't touched, I was squeezed. Or being squeezed. Because the squeezing hadn't exactly stopped. Still half asleep, I looked down to see whose hands were around me, because last I recalled there was no-...oh yeah. Cloud. The two skinny pale arms that were snaked around my stomach decided to confirm my latest deduction. I twisted my head over my shoulder and sure enough, there was Cloud. Or at least what I could see of him. He'd managed to wedge himself between the buster and my back, so what I could see was mainly part of his shoulder and his feet. When I moved he let out a mewling sound and I felt him bury into my back, somewhere between my shoulder blades through my hair. Well at least that explained the squeezing. Maybe he was having a dream, a nightmare, something like that. It fit his character to get those, now that I thought about it.   
  
Squeezing my stomach again, Cloud pushed his face further through my hair, rubbing against my spine. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck go up involuntarily and the skin a ways under my eyes heating up. Damn, now iI/i was blushing as bad as iCloud/i had been. Okay...so he probobly was having a nightmare, I thought to myself trying to shake the confusion that was deciding to have a party in the front of my brain. But what's the best option? Wake him up and have him freak out for a second, because whatever's tormenting him just grabbed him in the form of me? Or to have him be fighting it out alone? Cloud's fingers released and closed together again against my stomach and I bit my tongue this time. You know, being ticklish at times like this was probobly the worst thing that could happen. No, I lie, I could think of a lot worse things. Damnit, Cloud, stop moving around, I can't think like this...   
  
Well I couldn't just ileave/i him in there to be tortured. I tried to turn my head as much as possiable without evicting the blonde from my mess of hair, trying to get closer to his ear where he'd hear me if I spoke. I started whispering...I don't know why I whispered, it didn't make sense then and it wouldn't make sense ten seconds from then, but I did anyway. I tried to twist my shoulder enough to touch his cheek, or shoulder, or anywhere to let him know he wasn't alone. The backs of my knuckles brushed Cloud's side and he tightened his hold on my stomach, sighing. "It's okay, I'm not going to let anyone get you, Cloud." That felt so strange to say...But I guess it worked...Cloud made a sound that I almost couldn't hear at all and I could feel him relaxing against my back. His fingers twitched again and I bit my lip to keep from laughing. It didn't work as well as I'd planned, a sort of strangled sound inched out. It didn't wake him though, didn't even stir him.   
  
You know...How was I going to get out of this position? I guess I wasn't. I sighed and moved my hand away from Cloud's side, down across my stomach, held it against his clenched hands. This wasn't exactly making sense to me, but I guess there's more important things to worry myself over. If Cloud needed someone there to hold onto, what was wrong with being that person? I traced the length of Cloud's arms with my fingertips, following over the bare arms that had me locked down. Are fingertips more sensitive in the morning, or am I just full of it? He felt soft to the touch, and all I could do when I thought about how we must look right now was smile a little. There were sure as hell worse things to be doing. I sighed, I looked into space. I was still sleepy, who knew what time it was, but normally if it's time to be going there's at least isounds/i outside. So it was okay to go back to sleep.   
  
Closing my hand around Cloud's, my palm dwarfed his fists. When had he gotten so small, anyway? He didn't seem that way in the truck. This close up, though, too close to get the full picture, it was glaring me in the face. I was huge compared to him, like an oversized stuffed animal you sleep with as a child. Maybe that's what was making him hold onto me. I could hide him behind me, if I ever needed to...like I was now...I let my hand relax on his and let my eyes close again. So I'd stopped the nightmare for the time being. That was worth something...at least to me, even if he didn't remember it. I must have been more than half asleep a few moments later, because Cloud wasn't twitching or making sounds anymore.   
  
But I still partially woke myself speaking out loud. "I'll always be here for you, Cloud. I promise."


	6. Chapter 5

A revving sound outside gradually managed to drag me out of sleep and into awakeness, though not very effectively. I rolled onto my stomach with my eyes still shut, trying to remember what was going on. Wait, I couldn't remember something that hadn't happened yet. Okay, then how about settling for figuring out why the trucks were being started up. Well lets see...they could be packing up to leave, or they could be packing up to leave, or they could be packing...you know, it might be a good idea to get up about now. I levered myself up on my elbows and scratched at my stomach with one hand, shaking my head and blinking away sleep. I've always been a champion at being the slowest to wake up wherever I was. I guess this time wasn't much of an exception.   
  
Cloud was missing, that was the first thing I noticed. Mostly because nobody was holding me around the middle making little sleepy mewling sounds. I guess that was both a good thing and a bad thing. If he wasn't here, it meant I wouldn't have to scare him when he woke up, but it also meant he was probobly withdrawing into a little shell of guilt outside someplace far away from anything that breathed. I'd met people like him before. You give em one little moment of security and happiness, especially unconcious, and they feel like it's a crime. Like they're not allowed to be happy. Cloud was pulled so far into his little snail shell of stoicism I wouldn't be surprised if he was trying to jump off a cliff right now. Good thing there weren't any cliffs for a while in every direction.   
  
I stood and ruffled through my spikey hair, yawning and shuffling my feet across the slippery fabric of the tent floor. My boots made a zipping sound on the nylon as I moved eversoslowly outwards, poking my head out of the flap. It was a typical scene, since I'd overslept again. Most of the other tents were gone, or being folded up, and another truck had arrived to load on and off supplies. Sephiroth stood off to the side, I probobly couldn't have seen him except for a flutter of silver hair and black trenchcoat from around the side of one of the covered trucks. He was probobly talking to someone, but damned if I knew who. Maybe it was even Cloud. Well, at least someone would be talking to him then. Stepping out of the tent I managed to snare the grip of my buster on the top of the opening, but didn't notice until the tent itself ripped out of the ground after me and collapsed in a little pile of fabric and poles behind me. Some of the guys had paused working, tossing packs around and laughed after me.   
  
"Alert and on time as always, huh Knightblade?" one smartass shouted after me. I turned around to intake the fallen tent, completed a slow circle to face him. A split-faced grin worked its way onto my face and I cracked my knuckles together. This was getting to be a good early morning workout program.   
  
I didn't even give this guy the warning of coming for him. Two dashed steps, one jump, a shoulder slam and he was down. More shouting and the thuds of a couple packs dropping whirled around me as the guy flipped me over and tried to loop his arms around my neck in a headlock. Nice try pal, I'm a little too wise to those games. No problem to slip through the loop his arms formed and grab him around the midsection, pounding him down into the dirt getting a grunt from the guy. Clawing hands got the back of my shirt and started to pull it over my head. I rolled upsidedown over the guy's face and grabbed his shirt as I went. It was becoming more of a perverse game of tug o' war than anything else. For a minute he released my shirt and I jumped up holding my arms out, mock-roaring, the rest of the guys either cheering or laughing their heads off at me.   
  
Impact to the knees, I was down again with the guy pounding on me. I curled up over him and wrapped him in the same headlock he'd tried on me earlier, pinning him down with my shoulder. And the fight might have gone on longer, but part of the ring seemed to melt open as Sephiroth moved through on painfully silent feet. Again. Wow, he had great timing for my fights, he really did. Or maybe I just managed to call his attention with them. Either way it was something to worry about later, deffinitly not inow/i. I released whoever this smartass was from the headlock and jumped onto my feet as quick as was physically possiable while trying to tuck in my shirt at the same time. Was I going to get chewed out again? Man, it wasn't imy/i fault...   
  
Sephiroth held up one finger and crooked it towards me. "Zack. I need to talk to you. Now."   
  
Okay, so far better than I'd expected. I ignored the whispering and muttering from the rest of the guys and nodded, stepping forward to Sephiroth. "Alright, let's talk."   
  
With a sweep, Sephiroth's cape and hair swirled out around him like the wake on a ship as he turned and moved to the same truck he'd been standing behind when I woke up. I walked after at an even pace, stretching my arms above my head. It was pretty hard to get Sephiroth angry, but displeased was another matter altogether. Sephiroth could be idispleased/i if you asked to go to the bathroom at the wrong time. Still, he wasn't a bad guy then. Just kinda moody. When he stopped and turned, folding his arms across his chest, I knew what he had to say wouldn't be that bad.   
  
"I looked in on you while you were sleeping."   
  
Okay, that theory just went goodbye. "And?"   
  
"Strife was with you. Cloud." His eyes were unreadable. That was normal for Sephiroth. But his tone was something I'd never heard before. It was like he was worried about me, or something like that. But whoa, that made absolutely no sense. Sephiroth worried about ime/i? Reality versus life here, and this was just not correct.   
  
I shook my head and waved a hand, trying to show off that it's nothing. I mean c'mon, it wasn't like we were both bare ass naked and covered in chocolate. Wow, what a weird mental image... "We were talking about SOLDIER, he fell asleep in there. It's no big deal, Seph."   
  
One white eyebrow went up. Sephiroth would have been albino, if he was afraid of sunlight and had pink eyes. And was an albino. You know, just completely scratch that. Sephiroth would not have been an albino. "Curled around eachother like shrimp."   
  
"Shrimp don't curl around eachother," I pointed out. I was feeling rather tired after just waking up and all. I count that little fact an academic feat.   
  
"They do if they're mating."   
  
"Seph, you know me better than that, I'm not going to get into something like that ihere/i and inow/i." Man, someone had a one track mind. The whole concept of Cloud and I together was striking me as less and less strange as time progressed. Good thing time progressed quickly or I might have gotten tweaky and fidgity. At least he was saying this straight out. It would have been worse if he skirted around making little hints. I've had that happen before with a few girls I was with. There is inothing/i more annoying than a wink-wink-nudge-nudge that you don't get at all.   
  
Unfortunately Sephiroth didn't look like he did know me better than that. Oh wait, I knew why. Because I did that on our ilast/i mission with one of the girls in town. But I was young and foolish then! At least that was the excuse I was intending on using. The head of this operation gave me a sort of disbelieving glare, the kind that read ialriiiiiiiight/i in that regretful way and turned around. I let out a sigh, the exhasperated kind, and closed my eyes shaking my head. Christ, you couldn't enjoy yourself a few times without it going on your perminant record anymore. This sucked. That was probobly why when Sephiroth called back to me, I inwardly groaned.   
  
"If there iare/i relations between anyone in this group...I want to know about them." That wasn't the kind of tone someone who was interested in it as a spectator either. Pff...lovely. I opened my mouth to say something back but Sephiroth's magical interuption ability kicked in and he stopped my tongue before it had a chance to start. "If you're looking for Cloud, he's in the back of this truck. We'll talk later. You're riding with us anyway."   
  
I didn't question how he knew I wanted to talk with him about Cloud, or that I was wondering where the blonde skittish guard was. That was the beauty of Mako infusion. We didn't need to ask.   
  
.


	7. Chapter 6

The moving parts under a truck shouldn't make so many squeaks, it sounded like we were riding inside an old matress. Every little bump on the plains we went over, Sephiroth Cloud and me went ricocheting into the air and crashing back down. If we weren't expecting it anyway. After about the first ten minutes we were getting our truck-legs. Christ, where did this rig come from, the dump? This sucked. I didn't say anything aloud, though. Cloud was looking more uneasy every few minutes, wringing his mask in his hands like tearing it apart might make him feel better. Sephiroth just sat on a crate and watched. I felt like I was under glass, but there really wasn't anything I could do.   
  
We'd already gotten through the talking. I'd asked Sephiroth about Cloud's chances in SOLDIER, and Sepiroth had replied like he always would. We'd see, he'd see if he could help out. Very base kind of reply. The truck went over another bump and the shocks squeaked again, something in the cabin rumbling like thunder. It might have even been thunder outside, with the cover across the top there was really no way to tell other than poking your head out the back. And with the bumps we were hitting, doing that probobly meant being dragged behind. For some strange reason this didn't strike me as a fun activity.   
  
  
Maybe Cloud's silence and suddeny anxiety were coming from a few minutes before when our trucks got waylaid by some big lizard. Sephiroth grabbed Cloud and jumped out, I didn't stop him. His motive was pretty clear to me, he was going to give Cloud a crash course in tough fights. Sephiroth had no trouble with monsters like that, although Cloud came back banged up bad enough to need some instant attention. Shit. I was tongue tied for the situation, I couldn't think of what to say or do to make it better now that Sephiroth was watching me like a hawk. Or more like an over-protective mother after the boy who's taking out her little girl. Man, why did I always wind up being glared at. I wasn't doing anything iwrong/i and I wasn't causing anyone any harm. This kind of thing was rediculously annoying. Plus that, the silence we'd been stuck in was about to drive me nuts. It was worse than being told to sit still in the second grade.   
  
Screw it, I was breaking the silence. Cloud needed it, and if he didn't at least I'd have something to do rather than sit here and let my brain go on tangents. "Why're you so worked up over there, man?" I was sitting on a crate of supplies, almost lying down but not quite. I tilted my head backwards to look at Cloud. The blonde had one leg on the ground and the other folded under him, sitting on a steamer trunk with his eyes on his hands. When I started talking, he glanced up barely, a quick flicker in the blue eyes. Sephiroth on the other hand I could ifeel/i jerk his head up and glare at me. I didn't need to see it, it was running through that channel of unknown we liked to slap the name Mako on and not explain. I had to ignore that.   
  
At least Cloud couldn't be privey to the thoughts that jumped back and forth in the air of some other place. If he could have been, he probobly would have stopped talking altogether and spent the rest of his time curled into a little ball. You had to ignore a lot of what you felt after a Mako infusion, to just push it into a part of your mind classified 'not worth my time' or else you'd overload your own brain. The Mako 'allergy' that some people suffered from was more the inability to push that stuff out of the way than it was a real allergic reaction. At least that was how I looked at it. It made more sense to me this way. Cloud's blue eyes flickered up again, then jolted back down to his mask. "I was born in Nibelheim," He said simply, back in that flatline tone he'd used when I first met him. It was like Nialism transformed into language, and as if he was trying to make that a point in my head, Cloud shrugged.   
  
I raised an eyebrow at him from my semi-upsidedown look. He glanced up and caught it but that was about all. "That's it? Nibelheim's a nice place though. Consider yourself lucky, it could be somewhere that got blown to bitties by a Mako reactor." I tried not to do it, but my voice got darker anyway. My own hometown had been torn to peices by an exploding reactor, fortunately after I left...but there really wasn't much left to go back to, and it was always depressing to see the people you grew up playing on the swings with in school hiding out under lean-tos of scrap metal. That was one of the reasons I wanted to wander. Going back there just made you feel guilty, made ime/i feel guilty because I'd escaped it. I flopped my head back forward again and glared towards the back of the truck that creaked, bounced and grumbled along. "So you get to see your folks and your friends, or at least remember stuff about the place when you were little. I mean you've been away for how long now?"   
  
"Four years," Cloud's voice was the softest stoic mumble I think I've ever heard come out of a living creature. What was wrong with him, and why wasn't anything I was saying helping? I gritted my teeth just a little and tried not to think of what I thought it was. I thought it was Sephiroth. If he wasn't here, the blonde could at least talk a little more openly. Least I thought he would. I'd never know, since Sephiroth's imposinv anti-gravity bang self was here. Some of what I was feeling must have leaked through whatever Mako connected us with, because Seph's cold glare was on me again. I returned it and continued to speak. There's nothing wrong with having a conversation, Sephiroth. Bite me.   
  
"So why's this a bad thing? People're going to be glad to see you, at least know you're still alive. Don't take this the wrong way but you're not exactly the kind of person who writes home every week, right?" I stood the next time the truck went over a bump and started pacing. This was getting annoying. More than annoying, just plain tedious. Sephiroth was making Cloud lock up and introvert when I wanted to have a igod damn conversation/i. AUGH! The most Cloud did was glance up at me again and shake his head, ducking down again. His body language wasn't ridgid like a normal nervous person's would be...Cloud had a sort of rag-doll flop to him right now that only came around to people who were severely down in the dumps. Crap, and I was really trying here too. "Look on the bright side then. We get this mission over, you can visit old faces or just go wandering around. Or hey, I could go with you. We can have a few drinks, disturb some public peace, have a regular good time. It'll be fun, I'll show you. Okay Cloud?"   
  
Cloud glanced up for a split second again before looking down, the slight red twinging across his cheeks. Damn but he was shy. I don't think his heart was in it or he really believed it when Cloud shook his head slowly to me, but before I had a chance to bring something up on the subject again, Sephiroth spoke up in his me-silencing voice, the overtones not even bothering to mask his superiority over me.   
  
"Sit down, Knightblade, and leave Strife alone." I growled in the back of my throat and bit my tongue so I didn't make some stupid retort and threw myself down against one of the crates, folding my arms and glowering. Sephiroth was a good guy, oh yeah, just one who was being a pain in my iass/i at this point. I wasn't generally a violent type of person, I usually never even thought about glaring seriously. But right now, Sephiroth was really pushing my buttons. When he turned to me and spoke again, I wanted to punch him right in his smug pale face. "You're making it worse," that even tone like melting ice said.   
  
I narrowed my eyes and clenched a fist, pounding it hard against the box I was leaning against. The crate jostled and made a horriable crash against the side of the truck, its contents screaming in protest. I held my fist there and slowly shut my eyes, trying to drown out Sephiroth from my senses. Jesus christ...mommy, are we there yet?


	8. Chapter 7

"So that's why, huh?" I folded my arms and peered around the archway that marked the entrance to Nibelheim. Cloud was pressed hard against the fence next to me, looking down at his feet and going paler every few seconds. I could see his heart beating through his shirt, it was pounding so rough. His nails were dug into the fence, his arms shaking all the way up. Christ, Cloud was more torn up about entering this town that I'd given him credit for. And it wasn't until about two minutes ago when he blurted it all out at me that I knew why.   
  
See I'd been right about Cloud. He was the kid playing alone in the sandbox even if the playground was crowded. At the same time he'd managed to avoid that weird jelousy most outcaste kids get of the popular types. In fact, he wound up staring after one girl in particular for most of his life. He'd watched her grow up from a distance and it wasn't until she'd been in danger of being killed that he'd done anything about those feelings. After that they were sort of friends via obligation, from the way he described it. He hadn't seen it that way. So Cloud had this old flare here that he'd said he'd become a member of SOLDIER to. He was facing humilation by his only childhood friend. Owch.   
  
And there she was, not much of a little girl in my opinion, but a little to..uh...bouncy to fall into the catagory I looked at. Five years had done their work on the little buddy Cloud was talking about. She must have come running to the front of the town when she saw the trucks, probobly hoping to see Cloud. I felt bad for her, all curled up against the fence there watching us from far off. Cloud wasn't gonna show. I had a feeling I knew him better than that. For christs sake, just looking at her had him shaking like a scared puppy next to me. Sephiroth might have done something about it if he wasn't busy with the others. That and it probobly wouldn't have fixed a damn thing to take Cloud off somewhere else about now.   
  
I sighed and looked back at the blonde. "Well jeez, man, go talk to her!" We were gonna be standing here angsting and casting glances at the girl all day if he didn't do something fast. Hell, she was going to be doing the same thing. Not that I'm against moments of tension and nervousness, they make life more interesting, but I'm not the most patient of people and a day's worth of that would drive me crazy. Cloud just shook his head at my suggestion in a sort of spastic way and went back to breathing hard. He looked like someone who'd just walked out of a crash, somewhere between shock and throwing up. I pulled a face and glanced back at her. She looked pretty plain to me aside from the jugs of death. He must see something inside her. "Look," I brought myself to partially giving in a little. "I'll get a picture with her for you, then you can talk to it and build up courage enough to talk to her face. Sound good?"   
  
Cloud was more thrilled than I'd ever really imagined him to be at that. The idea was crap, I thought anyway. Jeez, he iwas/i completely unable to talk to her. "Would you do that?"   
  
Well, I'd made the promise, and it wasn't causing me any harm to go through with it. It made Cloud feel better anyway, I hoped. I grinned at him and nodded, folding my hands behind my back. "Uh-huh. You sure don't seem able to talk to her yourself, and you'll both go nuts unless someone does something. Hey, I'll tell her how you're doin too, okay? Won't tell her you're not in SOLDIER of course, but just to let her know you haven't been turned into monster food. I'm sure she'll be glad to know. I mean she's out here staring at the trucks like she's looking for her lost kitten. What's her name anyway?"   
  
Cloud had to swallow before he could speak, like it was a strain to even think right now. Man, someone had people problems. "Tifa...Tifa Lockhart," He managed to stutter out after a while. A weird calm took over his face at that time, seemed almost like he wasn't there. That is, until he suddenly lunged out and grabbed the front of my shirt, pulling up and into my face. I would have pulled back if there was anywhere to pull to just out of pure shock. Cloud was pretty short. "Promise you won't say anything about SOLDIER?" He demanded, hands shaking wound up in the fabric. I could feel his heart pounding and chest shaking against my own. Shit, if Sephiroth saw this, I'd be grilled...I took Cloud's shoulders gently and pushed him back half a step, just far enough away to not look as..uh...yeah...   
  
"I promise. And I won't say anything about me either, right? This is for you." Cloud blushed when I mentioned myself and I felt the corners of my cheeks go warm too. Same train of thought, the tent probobly. I looked to the side and thought of anything else to make the telltale red fade. Damnit I was going to wind up giving us away at this point. Note to self- aquire tact. I let go of Cloud's shoulders and sidestepped, trying to think of how quickly I could cover this up in case...well anyone caught on later. "I'll get Sephiroth in the picture too. Hang on, don't go anywhere." Holding up a hand and heading off, I left Cloud with a sort of nervous lost look that made me want to hit myself where it'd hurt for a long long time. Right now the blonde was more prone to chasing franticly after me or breaking down into tears of confusion than holding on for a minute or two. I should find Sephiroth fast.   
  
Thankfully it's hard to hide if you have silver hair down to your waist. Sephiroth was busy going over something with the driver of one of the trucks, flocked by the younger guards. I tapped him below his shoulderplates where he'd notice and took a step back. Looking over his shoulder slowly, Sephiroth's silver bangs spilled over and onto his back as the icey eyes hit me. Once again, he was all silence and suave. Not a hint of the weird and almost aggressive attitude he'd had about an hour ago. Sephiroth won the prize for weird guy. "Yes?"   
  
...I had not remembered to plan for the eventuality of his asking what I wanted. D'oh. I grinned sheepishly and jerked a thumb towards the entrance to town, right about to where I figured the Tifa girl was still sitting. "Think we should show we're friendly to the locals, don't you? There's a girl over there who's been watching us for nearly an hour we could introduce ourselves to." Flashing a brighter grin, I could practicly see Sephiroth generating disbelief. Bwahaha excellent. Just as non-planned.   
  
"I can not believe that you're already oggling girls, Knightblade," Sephiroth had gone from the level of cool monotone to the level of monotone right before you hit your head on a wall. "You've always been a lech but for god's sakes, do you have to drag me into it?" One of the strands of silver from his usually completely segregated bangs broke loose and dangled in his eyes. Me Zack, me good at driving Sephiroth crazy. I grinned again.   
  
Turning and looking over my shoulder I saw the girl had seen us talking and gotten to her feet. Probobly saw me point to her was why. I hoped she'd stay put instead of running off. Probobly the faster we worked the better. "Look Seph, if you spend all your time working and not having any interaction with people casually at all you're going to turn into an old man. Hey, you already have the hair for it. See?" The hair was such a nerve. I'd found that out the hard way in training, but never quite got it through my head not to press that particular big shiney red button. Hitting it had such interesting results, I really couldn't help myself.   
  
Sephiroth's normally pale face flushed crimsion for a second before he turned away glaring. When he turned back around I could swear I saw fires reflected in the pale ice eyes. They were there for a split second before vanishing down, pressed under the cold stoic facade Sephiroth was chosing to show. I fought the urge to laugh, because I knew I was going to get it as soon as he found time. For Sephiroth, a release of anger came when it was convinient. Usually it hurt like a bitch too, but I could cope with a little scratch or bruise. Watching Sephiroth explode was deffinitly worth it. Oh yeah. With a backhanded sweep of his fingers, Sephiroth brushed his bangs smoothly back into their normal formation. "I am younger than you are, Knightblade, but in the same way I am still your superiour on this mission." Slitted eyes glared so deeply into me for a moment I was afraid of him again, like I had been upon our first meeting. Involuntarily I stepped back, my grin faultering a little. Maybe this time was one press of the red button too many. "And I'll thank you not to make comments about my hair," it came out a pure growl, the glowering transformed into words. Oh yes, one push to many. Oh yes. "When you yourself look like a hedgehog."   
  
I happen to ilike/i my hair long and spikey, if I look like a hedgehog or not. But almost on instinct I ran a hand over it. "I ilike/i looking like a hedgehog." I muttered at the taller man.   
  
A sadistic little smirk worked its way across Sephiroth's face as he folded his arms towards me. "And perhaps I like looking like an old man."   
  
"So you're agreed?" Quick switch of subject, I started grinning again. I wasn't going to be distracted ithat/i easily. Much.   
  
One of the most seldom seen expressions on Sephiroth's face- confusion- managed to make itself known. "Agreed to what?" He dropped the air of authority and became what I knew he was- not only younger, but less experienced. He was the brains and probobly the major strength here too, but what he didn't have was streetsmarts or the experience you get from just plain living. It was times like this that he managed to flash it above his head like a big neon sign, looking like what he really was. A kid thrown here after a long indoor training session.   
  
"Taking a picture with that girl over there," I sidestepped around him, waving my hand in explanation and hopped into the back of the truck. Digging through the equipment crates I knew I'd eventually find one of the cameras we'd been entrusted with. The things were ancient, probobly pulled out of a dumpster in Midgar and fixed by some high school techies, but they worked. We were supposed to use them to take pictures of anything suspicious we'd find in the hulking mansion up on the hill...besides the mansion itself, that was.   
  
"Wait, who said anything about a picture!" Sephiroth was sounding more and more like a normal guy now that he was completely confused. That was good, it made my job much easier. Jumping back out of the truck with the camera in one hand, my boots crunched on the gravel at the side of the street. Grabbing Sephiroth by his unsupecting extended wrist, I started dragging him towards the entrance of the town where the overly-endowed brunette was backstepping in that sort of swoony fangirl way. Blah...Cloud really owed me for this one.   
  
But hey, I guess that's what friends are for. Complete and utter torture and humilation, forever frozen in a little papery snapshot. At least I'd managed to inot/i give Sephiroth bunny ears in the photo. Ehehehe...


	9. Chapter 8

That cold tightening that you feel inside when you're younger, when you're a kid and you don't have it all set straight. That pulling and twisting where your chest feels too huge to hold all thats inside, when your heart gets weak and doesn't seem to pump right. Where it hurts to live. That kind of pain. The internal pain, the ones you deny, but make it hard to walk.   
  
Yeah...That one...   
  
Where was I and what happened? I could move my fingertips but sight felt wrong. Seeing was wrong, part of the wrong place, the wrong part of the brain. The total inability to place it in the right area. Sort it out, make it into something understandable. I felt ice cold, frozen solid. Where was I? What happened? I couldn't place the eyes or the memory in their correct slots. Maybe they were mixed up, backwards, pegs that fit into eachothers holes but left gaps that just weren't right. No, no way...I could feel my skin, exploring inch over inch with my mind. I was all here. But the cold wasn't right. The blindness didn't feel right...   
  
I needed to control this somehow...place it into order. I couldn't concentrate too hard on it. It was like the whispering Mako left in the corners of your mind. Try to work on it too hard and escape it and it tightened, like a fingertrap. Think. But not down that way. Don't think about controlling. Just get the knowns. Like the first time.   
  
I am Zachery Knightblade. Soldier first class. I know that. People called me Zack. I know that. Things have to go slow when you're floating down these tubes, the lights flashing white and black around you like you've been dropped too fast down a waterslide. The stomach lurching up into your mouth is natural. The twitching you feel along your bones, under your muscles that pulls at them and scratches. You want it to shut up, you want to throw yourself across the room and scream and panic. Beating inside the too-large chest like the heart of a bird. Flighty. Calm down, you can't listen to that. Let it keep twitching like that or else it's going to break out and you won't be able to find your way back.   
  
Feel the sitting ghost? It holds you down and extends over any part you feel ready to move. You think you can call out and then it drops down on your throat too, and all that's left is inside you. That's where you have to go to get out of this. Inside. You have to keep thoughts from running astray.   
  
Alright...pain...I dug my nails into my shoulder and didn't know. When I took them out, they stung and sent shivers up my spine. Alright...Alright...What was the first thing they told us before, during the first time we went through this. To hold onto what you know, and pull yourself out that way. Hold onto the rope you can see in front of you and pull yourself forward. Gradual. When you open your eyes you won't be where you were before. Just keep remembering and knowing. You know where you are. You know where you are. You know who you are.   
  
Where am I? It's time to look around, because the more you wait, no matter how much you want the pegs to rearange themselves, they won't.   
  
It's cold, nails digging into my eyes. I didn't expect that, christ, I started screaming and a stream of bubbles shot out around the corners of my mouth. This didn't happen before. This wasn't before, was it? It might have been. DAMN! Stop thinking that way or we'll be stuck like this. I. Not we. I. Remember! There's something around my face. Move a hand and lines through the water...it's not water...they start moving too. Faceplate. Don't move it, there's a hose leading upwards. This must be giving air. It's the glow that throws it all off, the glow and the cold...they've got IVs running in and feeds running out. Do I even want to know who they are?   
  
It must feel like there's holes in my head...   
  
I can see my hands, now, glowing in the green. I know they must be mine because I'm alone here. I know this, add it to the list of things. Another thing I know. I'm not always like this. It's these situations that bring it out. Uncertainty isn't what I do. Deffinitly not.   
  
It's like walking on a sprained ankle. You bear the pain or else you may as well have it for the rest of your life, it inhibits so much. Yeah, I remember before. But they didn't leave us in this cold place. No, before it was one shot and you spent the day in a hospital bed. People were there to help. I brush hands out around slowly, I don't want to tear at these strings and wires. It could cause problems. To me or anything else. Just be careful for now, be careful. Find out something to know for certain. My fingertips brushed the edges and that's now a certainty. I'm held inside, and the area's small. Moving slowly still. Press the palms of both hands against the surface and move closer. It's warmer towards the edge, there must be something outside that doesn't freeze so...   
  
It's murky but the surface is concave. It's like judging someone sneaking up behind you from the reflection in a dirty spoon. Hard to see through and this isn't helping. Put a name to it, make it known. Make it a known, stop unknowing. Mako. This is Mako, this is what it feels like to have it washing through you. You don't have mako inside you, Mako plays with your insides. You belong to it. Not the other way around. You never control it, it just settles down and gets bored with you. Crunched feelings inside the chest. Thrashing, thumping, I grab at the pain but it doesn't go away. Not remotely. Through the frosty surface the twisted area outside takes an almost-shape. I feel sick trying to make sense of it all.   
  
I see another glow, I feel another glow too. Not far at all. Suspended like snakes coming from a ceiling, underwater snakes, a seaweed net of metalics all holding up a body that arched with hands in front and feet bent behind like a downward fall in slow motion. iI know that body./i Hands around my face tilt it back at an angle that hurts until I'm looking up into a faceless void that remembers. Remembers the feeling of him against my back and him asking for help. It feels like fingerbones reaching down my throat and I don't throw up, not outside, but the world inside starts expanding. Too many memories, ones that aren't mine.   
  
There's a clear spot in the glass around the silver mist they're trying to entwine me in. I swipe at it franticly and the snakes wrap and bite tighter and make the stream of bubbles shoot upwards again. Struck by the soundless screams the faceless one lets go and I drop. It's so cold. Through the clear spot the mist tries to close but I ignore the snakes and the cold and wave again. Wind starts knocking me about now. I'm stronger than that. Hands against the barrier, hands against the ice glacier I lock eyes with the floating shape.   
  
In the far off green ice, frozen and clasped in wire hands, there's a movement of blonde waves backwards in the Mako blood. Between the branches of silver a light blue locks into me. I can feel the sounds of it inside rushing across the space and conjoining. We were supposed to avoid contact with others...   
  
Others, what others? This is training, isn't it?   
  
No, training was nothing like this, the memories start to clutter back into the small area below my throat and expand making the bird-heart pound faster and the river spiral with sadistic glee. I can see...   
  
The training course was rough, but if we make sense of it, we can run it together, can't we?   
  
This isn't supposed to happen, we were supposed to know how to avoid this, this is the biggest danger of it...Yeah, if we're careful though, we'll make it through. I've done it before, I'll guide you around. No problem, right? Hey, I promised to keep an eye on you and I will. No hard feelings.   
  
Thanks...say...iWh/io ia/ire yiou/i?   
  
Extending hands you can feel flesh to flesh, alive and warm. iI/i'm ZaiC/icilou/ikid/i. Nice to meet you. Have you ever seen the leaves like this before, this time of year?   
  
No...Not many trees in the mountain. Nice though. I like fall.   
  
Better hurry, or we'll be late for training.


	10. Chapter 9

The soapy sharp smell accompanied the hissing of carbonation escaping from under the cap as I opened the soda the vending machine had reluctantly spit out. Somedays you could swear the machine was laughing at you, the mechancial gears inside grinding around into something that wasn't a metaphor or akin. It was alive, but for some reason I was the only one who noticed this, and I didn't let it bother me. The tightening inside my chest was getting worse lately without something to calm it down. It didn't make sense that I was drinking a soda anyway, I realized. This really doesn't suit me. So why the hell am I doing it? I sipped and winced. Too sugary. What the hell was going on?   
  
There was a clatter, the same sound that a hubcap makes when it flies off a car going eighty on a highway. In this place, this weird twisted place that had a sitting ghost clawing to keep on my chest and me drinking a soda, it was also the sound of a body being thrown across the hall and to the ground. Bodies do not clatter. Neither did boots, which made it strange that I heard glass breaking every time I stepped forward. Although I stepped, the floor seemed to glide under me and I was more sucked towards the body than I was walked towards it. I knelt down beside them, him, mine. The soda made no sound when I set it on the tile floor, the floor had no tempurature. This was getting creepy, I felt my skin crawling, but the sensation seemed miles away.   
  
"Hey...hey are you okay?" I clapped my hand down over the imobile one's shoulder and shook gently. Trails dragged afterwards and I felt sick watching them. This was like writing in the dark, with no sleep. Like I hadn't rested in years or something, but I wasn't anywhere close to tired. I felt cold, but just like the creeping against my skin, that was miles away too. I kept shaking him, this was getting to be something out of a five year old child's nightmare. I felt like if he didn't wake up, I'd be stuck here. We were so alone, what the hell? I felt like I'd been here before but then again not, and inside I knew there should be people on all our sides moving around like ants. Even in the dead of night. It's the kind of thing you get afraid of waking up into, because it seems like everyone's dead.   
  
You ever get that fear? To wake up, and find someone you care about just died while you slept?   
  
With a trail of blues he raises up his head and looks at me. It's too silent, like a movie reel with no sound. My ears are ringing because they know there should be sounds, and there aren't. It's starting to scare me when this happens. I pull back a little but his hand reaches out, so much smaller than my palms, and touches my cheek. Cold fingertips. Suddenly the world snaps into focus and it's not that twisted dream-walk anymore. I blink a few times and gasp to catch my breath, the soda gets kicked over and goes spilling across the floor, fizzing and turning the tiles watery brown. Cloud smiles and hides it behind a hand, laughing at my shock. Pulling himself into a sitting position, or more into one, he raked another small pale hand through his hair. The spikes ruffled in slightly different directions but stuck in place overall.   
  
"Just dizzy..."   
  
Very slowly now, stuff was starting to trickle back into my memory. Mako injections, SOLDIER training...No wonder I hadn't seen the others, it was right after the infusion. They were there now, not many, it must have been late at night. One of them had cursed when the soda spilled and went hopping off in the skittish praying-mantis way the scientists in this end of the building had. This was the medical wing, that was right. Prettymuch nobody here would know either of us besides our own doctors. Stuff flickered a little, a sort of crystalized amber outline that fuzzed in the middle with bad reception, a tele channel we were trying to recieve that was deffinitly beyond our range. I was at the machine, the soda wasn't for me, it was for Cloud. Where was our doctor, damnit? He was supposed to be watching after us, especially this soon after the infusion. Prolly went to the can or some shit. What the hell were we supposed to be doing anyway? The little nagging thoughts scraped against the back of my brain but I couldn't get a hold on-   
  
"The training field," Cloud broke me off, using the wall to pull himself to his feet and closing his thin fingers around my hand as he did so. I blinked in surprise and was pulled to my feet slowly as well. It wasn't so much that I was being pulled as I was following Cloud up. His fingers shook around mine, not so much physically as an unspoken instability that coursed down his arm and radiated off his body. Instead of the coppery aura of others, Cloud's was a misty blue and faultering in and out with snow-static. It was like he was about to be torn and wisked off just like stations you try to get on radio antenea that vanish and you can never reach again. Cloud was going to fade away, Cloud was going to be ripped away, the static was worse and crackling and the shaking of his hands were dropping through my very skin-   
  
I lunged at the shivering apparation and closed my arms around him, knocking us both to the ground, someone trying to become a human sheild. If I was closer to him, he wouldn't fade and vanish, right? My hands closed like soft vices around his shoulders and I put my head down against the course fabric of his shirt, pressing my face against and rubbing until it felt softer, smoother, smoothing out the fuzzing of reality with my skin. I'd keep him here, I'd keep him stable, I wasn't going to let him fade away into this twisted world, no way in hell. Against Cloud, pulling him tight against myself and coiling tightly around his smaller body, nothing was going to take him away. Nothing. Not the ringing in my ears, not the howling that I could feel somewhere outside like a hurricane wind. Nothing Nothing Nothing...   
  
"Zack, what are you doing?" Cloud's voice was distant too. Lost and far away, not physically but in tone. Drugged, probobly from the Mako. He wrestled slightly free of my clenching hold and put his hands against me, staring in a blank confusion. He didn't break away while he spoke, he didn't fade in and out like the people...where had the people gone again? And shouldn't the floor have been sticky from the soda? How long had we been here, like this, in this place? What was happening, why was he fading in and out like this?   
  
"Zack, please, you're hurting me," The unnatural calm in Cloud's voice should have grated on me like unfamiliar nails on my back. But it didn't. The out of place cool in his voice washed over me, a seditive that laid all my fears down. My nails loosed out of the cloth on his shoulders and I fell into a limp embrace around the smaller blonde, a fallen spiderweb wrapped naturally conforming around his angular body. Cloud's arms laced around my sides and held at my back, fingers tracing individual circles against my spine, ten moving rounded glass teardrops. I sighed, air escaping for what felt like the first time since I'd been here. Here...didn't matter. Cloud smiled up at me, the glassy surface of his pale eyes reflecting in unknown corners hidden away in my brain. His voice mewled into my ears, a fuzzy kitten stumbling under the covers against your legs. "Thank you..."   
  
My fingertips absentmindedly brushed Cloud's pale cheek. Mako shared thoughts, shared emotions I was unused to having another person sending to me...to feel what another person was feeling and yet...Tracing with my palms down the length of Cloud's sides, the silk sensation of lips touching sending warm liquid sensations along my back, around, following the contour of Cloud's arms against my stomach, washing over the entirity of the both of us. Tongues touched out like blind children hands, coiling around and against one another. Mieandering strangers in strange lands, meeting halfway between both and guided, sliding over one another, a lost, unseen. Felt, only felt, the heat rushing to the palms of our hands as they moved, cutting wakes through the fabric of our clothing, against one another and into openings, against skin, and still against one another in a slow ballete of the darkness, the tongues entwined and pulled apart, caressing one another. Pushed against the wall, halfway to feet, halfway to the floor, two wondering and curious if they could become one living creature, everything in rythm...   
  
It was all in rythem...   
  
iDoki, doki, doki.../i   
  
There were no people, they were gone, everything was startlingly crystal clear despite the Mako racing around us like an enthralled pixie. The palms of my hands were flat against the white painted cinderblock walls now, my body tented over Cloud who half reclined against the wall, blonde tendrils of hair drifting into his eyes. For a moment he seemed to flicker again when I sat back, knowing my face was red without feeling the heat of a blush against my skin. When Cloud stood, his smile was genuine and open, something I hadn't seen on his face before now. I thought. His hands encased one of mine again as he tugged lightly, drawing me up onto my feet. We were late for training, right, my mistake...nevermind the doctor, he hadn't been following us anyway. Cloud led me by the hand through the winding hallways of the complex, around in what felt like a labyrinth. At times they seemed to buck upwards or down, and I staggered. Shouldn't I know these halls?   
  
...I did know these halls...Even under Mako, you knew your way around, that was what they had been telling us in those grey-halled rooms....   
  
iThese walls are white.../i   
  
This wasn't the way to a training ground, this wasn't the way to anywhere that Cloud lead me on with confidance. I was the senior, I was the one who knew my way. He was new, he had no idea. Cloud didn't know the way, this wasn't the SOLDIER training area...   
  
My free hand strayed to the short sleeve draping off my shoulder and brushed it lightly up, touching ever so gently against the skin. No bandage, nothing there. Fingers pressed tentively against the skin and there was no pain. I twisted to check the other arm. Nothing. Clouds arms- nothing. Wait! I jerked backwards and stopped him short, glaring into the pale eyes. "Where are you taking me? Cloud, what the hell are you doing?"   
  
The blank expression was the same as he had given before, and the hallway behind seemed to twist and contort. If I turned, I knew there would be nothing deffining behind me. No vending machine, nothing. "We're going to the training grounds," Cloud spoke like an automaton, shaking his head slightly. With shaking hands, I brushed up his own sleeves. No bandages, no needle holes. I let go of his hand, my fingers shaking as if I hadn't eaten in days. Sounds started filling my ears, out of place sounds, whistling wind, clattering trains, electrical hums that never inahabited the SOLDIER training grounds...I was gasping for breath again...   
  
iThis/i was Mako, we were iin/i Mako...."Cloud..."   
  
This was an apparation, none of it was real, this was...this was... "Cloud, you're dreaming..."   
  
The very edges of the blonde's eyes twitched, the irises of his eyes quivering. Hands shot to the sides of his head and he was on his knees now, nails digging into his scalp, screaming and screaming...screaming as the walls disolved and the hallway itself shattered and we lost our footing, falling, lifting, standing in nothing. It was gone and fading and my own hands began to glow and break apart with static, a static pulled to one side. Cloud's scream burned in my ears as he too disolved into static, and broke away...   
  
We were inside Cloud's head. None of this was really real... 


	11. Chapter 10

The first thing back into the real world, or I hoped it was the real world, I gasped for air so deeply I thought my entire chest would cave in before it was filled. Instead of air rushing in, the sickly sweet half mint-half berry taste of mako flooded my mouth and throat. The gag reflex kicked in, my eyes clamped shut and my entire body jerking in protest. I could feel the bubbles floating past my face, the needles or whatever the hell else pulling at my skin as I thrashed around in the liquid, pushing against the slick surface that coiled on all sides. It was like being in the belly of a serpant, slowly getting digested. No matter how you started kicking and flailing and beating on the gullet of the thing, it would still oil you with its acids and burn you away. But that wasn't going to stop me, hell no. Not here, not now, I wasn't about to drown because of a nightmare, and I wasn't about to wake up into another one without showing I was damn unhappy.   
  
Bracing my feet against the glass behind me, clawing at the wires that wriggled down like jellyfish tendrils stinging me, I wasn't going to lie still and let them do...whatever the hell it was they were doing to me! Ripping at the tubes and wires, through the glowing green that was drowning my sight and thoughts machines started screaming, throwing themselves around inside their cages and boxes the same way I fought. Shapes, blurry in the murky green glow flashed past the concave surface before I could focus on them. Feet braced, I punched at the glass in front of me. The liquid dragged my fist back, slowed, nearly stopped. My knuckles batted against the smooth surface, doing nothing. Hell with that! I coiled the muscles in my shoulders and shot forward again, a distorted popping sound rippling through the liquid. A jagged line shot across the face of the glass, bubbles of air shooting in between the miniscule opening. I recoiled my hand and pulled together around my fist, a naked floating ball in the green watching those white lines creep and the machines scream. Trails of blood in the mako turned a sickly brown when it mixed, clouded and billowing out from under my stomach where I doubled over my fist. I could feel the glass digging into my knuckles, broken and ripping. GOOD. It would give me somewhere to hold onto reality from. I concentrated on the pain, glaring through the blurry glass. iLet me out you bastards/i I dare you. I kicked with my bare foot where the crack was forming and more bubbles shot up. On the outside of the glass I could see the sticky green sick ooze creeping towards the floor like something out of a cheap horror film. If they weren't going to LET me out I was going to find my own way out.   
  
Before I could kick again, bubbles started shooting upwards from the grating in the bottom of my little cell. The flooded past my body and buffeted me across the little tube, the change in pressure making me scream out once it hit my hand. My own breath which wasn't so much the air they were forcing on me but choked carbondioxied made smaller bubbles as it shot upwards with the others. It felt like they were trying to crush me with the pressure in the tank, smash me to little peices for messing with them. I screamed again, tucking tighter into a floating ball, figuring this was it, fuck it, I'd taken one step over the line too far.   
  
My own scream rebounded around the tube, holy shit I was loud...wait, my head was above the green now, I was actually in air. Recoiling and slithering away like some sort of giant slug monster thing the green was dropping lower and lower, washing away down those grates. It took me a moment to understand before I was gasping at the shock of breathing air again. My feet hit the grate about the same time I fell over gagging, spitting up globs of the stuff that felt like the lovechild of phlegm and jello. The glass all around me weas smeared with the stuff, slowly dripping down like jelly smeared on a cafateria window by fourth graders. The snakeing wires hung limp and dead without the fluid surrounding them, like unformed fish with the fluid let out of their eggs. Dead and half-shaped, dripping with what used to give them life. Tears streaked my eyes as I kept coughing, wretching long after there was anything still in my lungs and stomach to throw up. The drain under me gurgled as it lapped up the last little bits of liquid dripping down, mingled with the blood on my hand. I lay there, hands and knees, staring down the drain and gasping for quite a time. My hair was stuck together like I'd been swimming, dropping in my face in thick spikes that dragged towards the ground.   
  
I didn't look up first thing when I got myself together...I sat back and ignored them, whoever they were messing with me like a paper doll. Fingers still slick with mako and blood, I tried to be patient with myself as I picked the glass shards out of my hand and dropped them down the drain one by one, listening to them tinkle against whatever machinery was down there. Blood was smeared across them like paint on a plastic pallet, most of it having beaded and slid off a few minutes ago when the air hit me. My fist shook when I touched it, not sure if I was afraid or hurt or angry. Probobly all of them. What the hell were these sick bastards doing, we weren't animals or toys, we were human beings. They couldn't do this to us, damnit...   
  
So I stood, nothing to bandage my fist with for now, and walked to the smeared glass in front of me with its white canyon dancing along the front. I cut my hand against it like a knife and swept away the green glowing slime, peering out with a clear view for the first time into the other side of these tanks. Hazel eyes matched me back, a wirey haired man with thin framed glasses and a white shirt, glaring me down without the least bit of fear. Bastard, whoever he was, he wasn't going to treat me like a ten cent goldfish. I tapped the index finger on my injured hand against the glass, narrowing my eyes into slits. He was igoing/i to listen to me, or I was going to go out there and imake/i him listen.   
  
"Let me out," I enunciated slowly and loud, hoping the fairly obvious demand wasn't going to get lost by the glass muffling sounds. For a moment the man's eyes got larger but shot together into snake-slits. His finger crooked up, pencil thin and pushed the glasses further onto his nose. Arrogant peice of shit, this guy was. I guess we'd become his little toys but...wait...   
  
What the hell had happened after we got into this town? Not enough time to think it over in detail right now, just have to go with what I could grab quickly for now. There was...Sephiroth. And that girl. I could remember being hit, cut. Should have killed me. Well, I obviously wasn't dead, so hell with that idea. Maybe this sick fuck was the guy who'd saved me. But hell, dunking me down in a giant tank of mako wasn't exactly the idea of being saved I would put high on my list. The man and I glared eachother down while I kept thinking. There really wasn't anything else at the moment. I couldn't come up with much after being hit, I probobly passed out. Then how the hell did Cloud get here? How the-   
  
II had to stop him, I borrowed your sword, I'm sorry but I just had to, I promised-/i I shook my head lightly a moment, breaking eye contact with the man in the white shirt long enough to crane my neck and look across the room where the other tank was. Instead of the glowing green tube I'd seen Cloud in before, his was also drained and the blonde was pulled into a sitting position, eyes staring ahead sort of mistily, arms folded over his knees and chin resting atop them. It was like he was only half aware it was real. Hell, not like, there really wasn't any other reason for him to be acting so calm. Or anti-calm. The fact that he was still talking back to my thoughts with his own meant he wasn't entirely here yet. Shit, did this guy give iany/i thought to how we would react to being held under mako for however long we had been? I glared back at the man in glasses who let a light smirk creep across his face. He was deffinitly older than me. Time to gather some information...if any could be had. At least I was still able to keep who I was straight in my head.   
  
iYou're Zack, aren't you? And I'm Cloud.../i I put a hand to my forehead and sighed, trying to put Cloud's prattling thoughts into a corner to sift through later. Not now, Cloud, jesus, I'm trying to figure out how we got here and where exactly ihere/i is...And having this guy staring me down isn't helping. What am I, a bug under a microscope? Christ. "Let me out. Now." I reiterate the last bit by giving the glass a quick backfist with my bad hand. It leaves a slight smear of blood, so thin it's clear, and the crack in the glass pushes outwards more. The man in glasses took a step back and nodded his head off to one side, to someone I couldn't see through the dark and smeared glass. There was a hiss, maybe pressure change or maybe just hydraulics. I'd guess the later because the front half of the tank swung open cleanly, leaving me free to step out into the room. The floor was ice cold on my feet and I shivered, forcing myself not to huddle up in the cold. The man with the hazel eyes kept an even watch on me when I moved, barely seeming startled. Hell, talk about stoic.   
  
"We have to keep the room a constant ten degrees C," he remarked cooly, watching me fight off shivers that were already managing to work into the muscles on my legs. Great, he could see I wasn't anywhere near ready for this. I love it when plans leave you without a next step and well...naked. Speaking of which... "Where the hell are my cloths?"   
  
The eyebrows which were so cleanly etched on his face they may as well have been painted on arched up together as the man in glasses turned his head ever so slightly, one of his hands waving out. They were wide and flat, like they'd been carved as one peice. The guy was angular, that was really the only way you could describe it. And it was in the kinda way that made my skin creep walking around him in this cold room. At least the machines screaming had stopped. That must have been annoying out here, without the mako or glass to muffle it. The guy's voice cut through my thoughts just as easily as the glass shards went through my skin, the trace of a smirk gone. "To your left, Mister Knightblade, in the storage lockers."   
  
I followed the wave of his hand towards the green painted lockers on the far wall, the paint was dark but you could see where it had caked over the vents in the lockers and dripped. It made me wonder what colour they'd been before, creaking them open on the angry hinges. I barely had a chance to glimpse into the first locker before the man's voice grated on me again. I could have ignored him but right now...I really felt like wearing something besides my birthday suit. "It's the one on the ifar/i end," he corrected me. His voice was laced with something I couldn't quite place, maybe something like that kid in the grade above you who thought he was better just because he'd had the same teachers before you. Not the kind of tone I really enjoyed being spoke to in. I moved to the other locker and growled, pulling out the same pair of pants I'd arrived here in and slipping them on. At least my ass wasn't going to become a frozen mako-cube now.   
  
Slithering the sleeveless shirt on over my head, for once I was extremely regretful of my usual selection of cloths. This sucked. I never really expected to be anywhere that was icold/i lately. Maybe it was better to dress like a psychopath in six tons of black layers like Sephiroth did- iFire/i   
  
I blinked and paused, shirt halfway over my head, listening to the flick that had just broken through the boundry I'd put between my and Cloud's thoughts. For a moment I thought it wasn't coming back and slithered my head through the neck hole, moving my hands to my neck to pull my hair through. What in the hell had brought that on, and why did it bring an image with it? Why was there that flash to flames? To being burned? I looked towards Cloud, he was curled up now, shaking in a small pale ball at the bottom of his tank. Gritting my teeth and wrapping his cloths from the bottom of the locker around my good hand, I stalked past the man in the glasses and stood in front of Cloud's tank. Without looking at them, I growled. "Open it."   
  
There was a faint sigh, like a parent humoring a spoiled child, and the hiss of hydraulics again. Without a creak, loose on its hinges like a screen door, the front of Cloud's tank swung away but the blonde didn't notice the change at all. I stepped over the rim at the front carefully, ntoe quite sure if I got inside if they'd lock us up again or what. I knelt on the grating, watching my breath turn into a cloud of mist and swirl upwards and away in the cold. The grating left lines of moisture on the knees of my pants, but I did my best to ignore it. Cloud was going to freeze if I left him sitting in here, cold wet and completely bare ass naked. These guys sure were inconsiderate fuckers. I rolled the shirt around my hands, hoping not to smear the blood against it. Hell, even if there was blood left on the shirt, it was better than Cloud freezing here without even knowing it. I pushed it down over his head in a ring and tried to unfurl the shirt around the kid's shaking body...but the closer I got to him, the more insistant the chatter in the back of my brain.   
  
iZack...You are Zack, aren't you? What's touching me, why is there fire? Why did you see fire?/i Cloud made it extremely difficult to dress him, pulling tighter and tighter into himself every time I reached for his arm to guide it through the sleeve of his shirt. Damnit, it's not like I'm some monster or something! I sighed, watching another cloud of icey air drift out and break away against Cloud's pale knees. "I didn't see any fire, stop relying on thinking at me so much, it's going to make you crazy," I whispered, giving up for the time being. "Yes, it's me, it's Zack. There isn't any fire."   
  
Even as Cloud started to relax and I was able to slip his hands through the long sleeves of a trainie's outfit, the man with the wire rimmed glasses spoke behind me. Damn bastard, did he have to listen to everything that went on? It was that condicending tone again, it was starting to drive me crazy. "Actually, Zachery, you did see fire. All of Nibelheim up in flames like..." He paused a moment and looked skyward, ceilingward, whatever. Searching for the right words, trying to get the impression across it was beautiful even though every sentance bled false emotion about what had gone on. "Like something ordained by a God..."   
  
And it started rushing back into my brain, unfiltered, running throught the doors of the mansion bleeding from my stomach, leaving trails where I stepped. I might as well have been dumping buckets behind me, it felt like I was loosing that much. The heat licking against my face was like hell at the time, bright orange and licking against everything. The whole town ihad/i been on fire. I was in no condition to help, the light was already misting over my blood starved brain. But someone started calling out, asking to help dounse the flames, so I started to help, trying to ignore the blood spilling routinely down my legs and against my boots. I must have collapsed, I don't even know if I did anything to save anyone...   
  
I might have started thinking about that more if Cloud didn't nearly shatter my eardrums screaming. His little hands went up to the sides of his head like rabid spiders and clamped onto his temples, the blonde throwing himself around of a sudden and rattling bones with his shreiking. He kicked too, eyes squeezed shut, he must have had no idea what he was fighting with. I grabbed his shoulders and tried to hold him still and for a moment it looked like it'd worked. Cloud's eyes opened, blue like the skies away from cities and locked into me. Something twitched in his face, though, and the rims of the sky eyes started watering. With the same twitchy speed he'd gone at himself, Cloud was locked around my waist in a death grip, his face burried in my stomach and his entire body shivering. I would have been shocked, but I was already. All I could do was stroke his back trying to calm him down while that maniac behind us started laughing, the kind of held in adult chuckle that fills movie theatres. I would have glared but it didn't do a damn thing.   
  
"Your friend," He interjected between his dying laughter, "Looks in no condition to be leaving here. And with him so perminantly attatched to you via the Mako, I don't think it looks like you'll be on your way out either. So, welcome to your new home." I could feel him moving closer, standing over me, leering down. "My name is Doctor Hojo."   
  
The little hairs along my back stood despite the cold and I tried to jump up, to get on my feet and punch the bastard in the face for treating us like toys, for turning Cloud into a little pile of psychotic. Unfortunately the little pile of psychotic also had an amazing grip, so halfway to my feet when he screamed out in protest and refused to be lifted, I stumbled and hit one knee on the deck, my fist still in the air. Hojo's hand shot forward from his sleeve like a moray eel out of a cave and pinned my fist against the glass, twisting my arm backwards and making me grunt in protest. It ihurt/i. And this scrawny bastard was strong. Bending down and moving nose to nose with me, the reflection of the glasses had me trapped behind the tank all over again. Hazel eyes they might have been but there was no more human emotion there than in dummies in a wax museum.   
  
"It's time you stopped playing games, Zachery," he intoned so softly in my face only I could hear. One of the people in the dark behind moved, and Hojo stepped away releasing my hand. The hydraulics whined again and the glass door moved smoothly shut under the guidance of Hojo's hand, trapping Cloud and I inside. Bugs in a bottle, the only sound that of the blonde's muffled whimpering against my side. So they were right. Hell was other people. 


	12. Chapter 11

Locked up in a tube again. Great, dandy, fucking terrific. At least they weren't flooding me with Mako again. And at least this time I had someone to talk to again, even if it was only Cloud. Even if he was going completely off his little blonde spikey nut. This place was starting to make me get cynical in a way that was even starting to grate on my own nerves. Hell, I was cynical most of the time, but this was just bitter cynicism. And this tank still ismelled/i! What the ihell/i Mr. Hojo-Fucking-Prick-Aloof-Lizard-Eyed-Coke-Bottle-Glasses? They were big enough around that he could have used them for coasters on his drinks.   
  
So here I was, flopped down on the floor of a tank that was supposed to be filled with Mako, a hysterical blonde chocobo-head latched onto me like he'd break into little peices and fall down the drain if he let go, looking up at the ceiling that dropped down tubes and wires and needles like a shredded tongue. Locked inside where green chunks of psychosis inducing phlegm were gradually freezing themselves to the side. Aaaaand I couldn't think of anything to think about. Christ, they could have at least left me drugged or something so I didn't have to think. Or at least so I'd have something to try to do, like regain coherancy. But I was perfectly coherant, and being clung to by someone who's most structured sentance so far had been "no" and for the most part gurgled out something like "Uaaglarlarlar." On top of all of this, despite the fact I'd been trapped in Cloud's little dream world training center a while, I don't think anyone had any idea how tired I was.   
  
I'd sleep, oh yeah, if it wasn't still iass fucking cold/i in the tank. Maybe the Mako had been warmer, but now we were two little mako-cicles in the freezer. About the only warm spot in the entire tank was where Cloud's chest and face were seemingly perminantly welded to my stomach. Still, cold empty stomach was deffinitly worse than a empty warm stomach. Speaking of which, when were they feeding us? This sucked. Ooo, mature thoughts towards captivation. Maybe I'd regress to a five year old out of boredom and then they'd have to let me out because I'd get so repetitive and whiney and throw temper tantrums if they didn't. Either that or they'd shoot me. Or cut me up. Or sink me in Mako again. Or Hojo would tie me to a string from the ceiling and bat me around like a cat toy. Whoa, weird mental image.  
  
Still it wasn't so far from the truth, that much was damned obvious. The way the guy talked, condicending, and the way he waved those flat paper white hands around. Every little thing about him bled that he was playing God at us. And what about those dark shadow-guys we didn't see or hear? iWhy the hell am I thinking we, Cloud can't even stand up on his own right now, I know it was me...blah/i. They were like the guys dressed in black in Kabuki theatre that were supposed to symbolize nothingness, you weren't supposed to see them. That was probobly what they were getting at so silent and back there. It couldn't be coincidence, right? Make it feel like this whole place was living on its own, with that Hojo noodle as its only living part. Hojo the noodle...I started snickering. That was just too good a mental image to let go. Oooo lookit me I'm Hojo and I'm a NOooooooooooooooooOOoooooodle!  
  
I really should be serious about this.  
  
I've never really been panicked before, or scared really. I guess. This whole sitution was freaking me out, I was getting silly as a defence mechanism. Goodie, if I couldn't take it seriously, we'd never get out of here. I was supposed to be a SOLDIER, damnit, cool and calm. Everyone always made us out that way. The SOLDIERs were stoic, smooth, we were fighters and saviors and warriors and all that propaganada crap the people trapped in slums ate up and followed us around because of. I was supposed to be able to take this all without batting an eyelid. Jesus christ, FUCK stoicism, leave the cool and calm to the Turks! I was iscared/i, and I was perfectly ready to trade in my title as a SOLDIER to go running home crying to mommy. ...Shit, there was a depressing thought. Now I wish I'd visited home again sooner. What if I didn't see it again ever? Man, fuck my parents right now, what about Cloud? Even if we did get out, I didn't know for sure he'd be sane again. That was worse than being dead sometimes, having someone you know and love come back and not be the least bit coherant...Fuck no, I wasn't going to keep thinking like this either. Cloud was going to get better, I was going to get us both out of here if I had to. It was just too cliche that we'd both die in here.   
  
Let's inot/i rely on emotional extremes, eh? How about trying to stay the appropriate emotions for this situation, whatever they were? ...What the hell, panic iwas/i appropriate, we were locked in tanks and being drowned in a toxic substance that made you half telepathic and half insane while some psycho with glasses and a lab coat and a bunch of black-dressed minions all ran around outside looking in giggling. God...and my eyes were stinging now, this was going quite a bit too far. Okay, I give up, the emotion hereby applied to this situation is pissed-off-edness. It worked. I was tired, hungry, had a psycho clinging to me...yeah, seemed right to me. Pounding my fist backwards against the glass, the wires dangling down from the top jiggled against the impact and the tank shook, the thump of flesh on a solid substance echoing a little in its blank interior.   
  
"Let me the hell out of here, you fucking sickos, this isn't fucking funny-" It wasn't screaming, yelling, anger...more the fed up frustration you get in your voice when you babysit for a couple of kids who've been playing hide and seek with you for hours. You just want it over with. And thats what I wanted. Hell, they couldn't really experiment on humans, right? And even if they did, where in the hell would they stash the results, the red tape, so on so forth etcetera? It didn't make solid strategic sense to do it. So what were they playing at, this stupid game? Hojo couldn't really touch us. He could drown us in mako til we went loony, that was true, but with me that'd take a damn long time and if I worked at it I could keep Cloud sane too. Shit. Okay...nobody was responding to my shouting and pounding, so maybe we were alone down here.   
  
...I'd accomplished one thing. How exactly to feel about this situation, other than completely violated. Which I think you can't blame me for feeling. See how secure you feel after you've been stripped nude while you're out cold from blood loss and then shoved in a tank of mako where you trip out and wind up running around in your new friend's head. I for one was glad I hadn't collapsed in a little pile of psycho-giggles waving my feet and hands in the air. On the other hand, psycho giggles would probobly be a bit more comforting than complete and utter conciousness. This sucked. I was waxing on immature but it did. There was no way around it. Hell, I couldn't even turn to look around the room because Cloud was stuck on me like a leech.   
  
So project two was what then, since figuring out how to look at this had been packed away in a neat little ball of completeness. Figuring out where we were seemed pretty important, although I had a pretty good idea. Shinra mansion, seemed like. What part, that I wasn't so certain of. Anyway, since we were stuck in the tanks at the moment, that was sort of irrelivent. Well, then the next problem to attack would beeeeeeee....  
  
Cloud made a little incoherant sound, like a snail who just got vocal chords for no reason. I groaned and let my head flop backwards, hitting the glass of the tank with more force than I'd intended. iOw/i. This had to be head-injury week or something. Well, the next problem wasn't just staring me in the face at least. It was clinging to me like it'd disappear if it let go. "Christ, Cloud, you couldn't have picked a worse time to crack under pressure, you know that?" Looking up at the snake-fingered ceiling of the tank was better than trying to look at Cloud, who I couldn't even be sure if he was hearing me or not. Great place and time, Cloud, really...I sighed and ran my hand through my hair, winceing as the unwashed spikes hit the open area on my knuckles.   
  
Looking at the back of my hand I wondered if it'd been a bad idea to go pounding the glass on my tank. I couldn't be in this one with Cloud forever, the pretty obvious reason being...well if you were alone in a glass tube naked, it was harder to commit suicide. Wee, comforting thought. Clenching my hand into a fist, the scabs around my knuckle pulled apart and cracked, a little trickle of blood springing out of the sliver and pattering down the back. It was probobly both the cold and natural healing which had closed it up this quick, frozen the blood straight to my skin in a little ruby red ...whatever shape it was. Maybe I was wondering too long, a drop beaded and fell off the edge of my hand and hit Cloud's forehead with a light pat. Tch, great. I put the knuckle into my mouth and began to lick at the blood. Smooth move, Zack, now if Cloud touches his forehead he's going to trip out even worse because he'll see blood.   
  
The vice grip on my stomach loosened and I tensed up, dread making little bushwacked trails up and down my spine. I knew what was coming, it was like sitting on your bed after breaking something ireally/i expensive in your house and dying the thousand little deaths before you even heard someone storming up the stairs to make you even more sorry than you already were. Cloud's hand detatched from my back and moved away, touching his forehead unsteadily. Oh great, I thought. Here it comes. Brace for lunatic impact.   
  
"Zack?" Cloud's voice was sleepy and far away, deffinitly only half in this reality. Same way his mental voice had been. Hell, what was he doing figuring out how to listen in on thoughts with Mako anyway? None of this looked so good. I didn't answer at first when he pulled away, the cold air of the tank brushing on my stomach where he'd been and making me shiver. I felt like a trapped mouse in a grade school classroom's pet snake's tank. I was just waiting for Cloud to lose it again. I wasn't ready, though, for him to look at his fingertips and rub them together just silently staring at the blood there. Which of course, is exactly what he did, because nobody's allowed to let Zack be remotely right or close to sane in this wherever it was.  
  
We were quiet a long time, Cloud sitting back on his knees just barely out of my lap and staring at the blood smeared on his fingertips. Just a little droplet, hardly enough to like...smear around his face and freak out with. But I expected something from him, a reaction. I should stop panicing, for christs sakes he was probobly just getting this through his mako-clogged thoughtways. Jesus Cloud, do isomething/i.  
  
"This isn't mine." He spoke. The last thing I expected him to do was keep talking. Why did he have to keep talking and sounding so crazy? "You got hurt..." His voice started to come back a little as he looked up, saw my hand in my mouth with some of the dried blood smeared on the back. I just blinked at him. iPlease/i don't do anything weird, Cloud-chan, and I'll figure out some way to repay you. Please please please...  
  
Cloud's hands moved slowly and gently, and his voice gained more assurance every time he used it. It was like he was getting onto sanity the same way you get on a bike you haven't ridden in a long time. He pulled my knuckle away from my mouth and inspected the wound, shaking his head and staring at it with light blue eyes that now glowed faintly. No big surprise there, being dunked in Mako would make that happen to you. He was so serious all of a sudden, back to the sullen kid in the back of the truck. Did he even remember his dreams, did he even know where we were? Was he that far out of reality? "You hurt yourself, Zack." His eyes looked almost misted as he held my hand between his fingers, the same way a little child holds a box turtle they caught outside.  
  
"Do you remember where we are?" For some reason my voice was choking up now, I was babbling, I was the one who sounded crazy. "Shit...you remember, don't you? Nibelheim and that girl and the reactor and-"  
  
Cloud was shaking his head, not even looking at me. Damn, I wish I knew what he was shaking it to. He was scaring me, what was going on here... "You shouldn't beat yourself up you know," He muttered so quietly I probobly wouldn't have been able to pick it up save for the fact that that we were sort of trapped in a giant glass tube that bounced sound around like a megaphone. "Even if it got you out...please don't do that..."  
  
"Stop talking so much, you sound like me," He should be reacting some other way, shouldn't he? Shouldn't he? God damnit what the hell...  
  
Cloud sighed and inhaled sharply a moment, I watched a shiver jump off his shoulders and slide down his back. Lifting my hand to his face, he brushed my fingertips against the bridge of his nose, eyes shut and face downturned. I could feel the warmth from his breathing in and out brushing against my bare wrist and it shocked me out of my babbling paranoia. Cloud wasn't better, and he wasn't okay. "I can hear you inside, I remember..." Whispering again, it sounded so strange coming out of him. Flat monotone was fine but whispers just didn't feel safe.   
  
I shook my head, trying to figure out where to start at explaining this. I had to straighten him out before he went completely nuts and like..tried to eat my hand or something. I moved my fingertips around, twisting my wrist and touching his cheeks, leaning closer and putting my head at an angle so I could see into his eyes. "That's just the Mako, Cloud, you gotta calm down. Hey look, I'm here with you and it's gonna be okay. Get a hold of yourself, freaking out's not gonna do anything, right?"  
  
Cloud's hands tightened around my palm and he inhaled sharply, another spasem rushing across his skinny short body. "But you hurt yourself-"  
  
"It's nothing, it was only an accident anyway. But hey look, it got me in here with you didn't it? And it's not bleeding anymore, look at it. I'm fine." I smiled faintly. Shit, I was so bad at this comforting stuff. I really was. I couldn't go with instinct, right? Words weren't doing me much good either.   
  
Eyes pressed shut and cheek rubbing against my hand like a lost kitten, a very faint keening broke out of Cloud's throat. I blinked a moment at the sudden cold streak on my fingers before realizing the damned obvious...Cloud was crying. Even though his body shook and his eyes watered though, his voice was still the unfaultered whisper. He was so detatched from it...It had to still be mako. I wanted to break Hojo's face, why was he doing this to us? "Zack don't leave me," It wasn't frantic, wasn't clingy, wasn't pleeding. Just a stoic whisper. "Don't leave me alone."  
  
"Hey," I lowered my voice to the same tone I'd used with little kids when they were crying. Everyone needed to be comforted by someone who acted much older sometimes. Someone who at least acted stronger. Good thing I was just naturally overly optomistic, otherwise we'd be in a real angsty mess. "I'm not goin anywhere, okay? If I go anyplace, you're coming with me."   
  
"I'm cold..." The mechanical talk again. He was either really getting hit hard by the Mako, or completely detatching himself from the situation. Or both. It could be both, duh.   
  
I laughed, I couldn't help it. It was funny, in a very weird and probobly increadably inappropriate way. Ruffling Cloud's hair lightly with my other hand, I grinned again. Maybe if I kept up the more normal attitude about things, it'd give Cloud something to get a grip on and straighten his own thoughts out. It wasn't that long ago that I'd been hit with Mako for the first time, and I could remember pretty clearly the complete confusion. It feels like you've been thrown into an alternet universe. It wasn't hard to be sympathetic once you've been wandering around as a mako zombie yourself. "That's prolly because you haven't got any pants on, you psycho. It's below freezing in here, look you can even see your breath. Come on. Let go of my hand and get dressed. You'll feel better than."  
  
For a moment Cloud didn't move, just breathing out little icey puffs into the tank's air. It seemed a pretty long moment of silence, at least it was for me before he nodded and started looking around in what I figured was confusion. Shifting my weight I moved the wadded pair of pants I'd grabbed from the locker out from behind my back. I'd been using them as a pillow, sorta. At least they'd be relitively warm when Cloud put them on. There's inothing/i worse than icey pants. Like ever get an icecube dropped down your shirt? It's a ithousand/i times worse. Don't even try to imagine, you'll go into convulsions if you do. I swear to god. I tossed the crumpled pants at Cloud and they landed with a flop in his lap, the blonde making a light jump of surprise. His reflexes hadn't come back yet...that was odd. Mako usually got your reflexes more online. Maybe it was the cold, that had to be it. "Put those on before something important freezes and falls off," I smirked and folded my arms behind my head, leaning back. Maybe in another time or situation this would be intruiging, watching Cloud dress himself. But right now I was more worried about him being able to stand without falling over. Fortunately he was smarter than that, at least, and knew he wasn't in any shape for it. Scooting back on the metal grating, Cloud wormed his way into the wrinkled fabric of the pants and curled his knees against his chest again, shivering.   
  
You know what, this was just rediculous. Watching Cloud freeze. Aaaaaand I wasn't gonna do it. Before Cloud could go into his little psychosis ball I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. It was like fishing, I guess, because netted I dragged him back against me despite the fact that his entire body tensed in reflex and his eyes flashed open darting around. Screw this. Flopping over on my side I dragged Cloud down onto the floor of the tank with me, pulling him close against my stomach. It felt like I was a little kid again, and I'd just gotten a puppy for my birthday. You ever have a dog, Cloud? I wondered...  
  
"Zack?"  
  
"Don't think too much about it. We'll both freeze if you sit over there, and it's more comfortable this way too. Hell, even I get lonely. So stay here, alright?" I smiled and closed my eyes...I didn't want to see the snakes on the ceiling. Just sleep. I was so tired. "Just get some sleep. I'll get us out of here." The burrowing feeling of Cloud curling against my stomach made me brush absently at his hair, smiling again. "I promise." 


	13. Chapter 12

"Know what I'd like to see again when we get out of here?"   
  
It's been over two weeks now, stuck up in this lousy tank. Sometimes when I sleep, I get sucked into Cloud's freaky little dream world. It's not so bad, if you don't mind being dragged along like some movie reviewer. At least it's close enough to a real dream that once I wake up I don't always remember it. Sharing dreams is so strange, to wake up panting at the same minute in a nightmare or groggily try to remember the same details. Peicing together Cloud's dreams was something that kept him sane. Or maybe kept me sane. I wasn't trying to concentrate too hard on who was going crazy. It didn't really matter to me anyway. I knew we couldn't be kept in here forever. Actually I didn't know that at all but jeez, what good was it going to do imagining that that Hojo psycho was going to turn us into a well salted lunch platter?  
  
Did you ever have a moment where before, you had this huge monstrous plan sorta figured out and it was all moving along on the run, real smooth, and then it just seemed to die out on you? I was feeling that right now. It was the first time, too. I was starting to wonder if being stuck in these tanks was starting to kill me a little on the inside. It sure as hell was cramping more than just my style. There was less to talk about, less to think about. If dreams become your whole world, what the hell seperates it from reality? I felt like a kid in a playpen, trapped in here all day. He hadn't touched us in the whole time since he had us locked in here. We'd been left entirely alone, come to think about it. Lights off, except for the little bits of emergency lights left on in the hall. It was like you were living in a shadow world. Shadow me, Shadow Cloud. It's so unreal, two weeks, and it's still too big for me to wrap my brain around that we're really in here.  
  
Cloud didn't say anything at all to my questions. He'd stopped talking again, for the most part. I don't think it was the Mako anymore so much as the thought of being locked up in here. Sometimes you'd say a word wrong and he'd freak out. Fire and he'd scream. Sephiroth, screams. It was like walking in a mine field but I was starting to get better at it. Like a dream I had once, where I'd been dragged to a mine field and I could see the mines in the sand. Damn, why did I have to remember my nightmares right now? Getting morbid wasn't going to keep me sane. Shit shit shit. Whatever happened to the shy kid asking me to help him study to get into SOLDIER? Locked down somewhere inside an ultra-deffensive shell somewhere, I guess.   
  
Kicking my feet in the air, I was lying on my back in the tank. Cloud was pulled up into a little ball opposite me, his arms wrapped tight around his knees and his nose burried. His eyes were shut up like he was sleeping, but I didn't think he was. Anyway I hoped he wasn't. It didn't really matter, the talking didn't seem to do anything for him. Mostly for me then. I swung my feet lightly against the rounded sides of the chamber, and they made a light slapping sound. It was still cold in here, I could still see my breath a little if I tried. I wished I'd looked for boots, or socks, or something. Cloud didn't seem to care, but he was prettymuch catatonic at the same time. It was like talking to a dog that'd just drank a bowl full of spilled martinis, only not so amusing, because Cloud didn't walk around the chamber and then fall over making funny barking sounds. By this point I'd actually forgotten what I wanted to say when I tried to start the conversation, but starting over again wasn't a problem. I mean hell, I wanted to do a lot once we got out of here.  
  
"Think I'd like to climb up a mountain and sit at the top, and see what's so great about mountaintops." I started to let my thoughts ramble. If Cloud was listening, at least he wouldn't be in silence. "You know what I mean, Cloudman? There's always gurus and chosen ones and enlightened people at the top of mountains, sitting around and absorbing the brainpower of the earth or something. Probobly my brainpower. That would suck, ya know? If a bunch of psychos on the top of the mountains who liked to levitate and make humming noises were sucking out my brain. I mean, I put it to better use than they do, I think. Or at least I would, if we weren't locked in this stupid itank/i." I kicked the glass solidly with my foot, but it just shook a little. Cloud's tank must have been more sturdily built than my own. Come to think of it, the structure was different overall. Maybe it was built for something else. I didn't feel like thinking about that in particular. "But if we were out of here, I'd be up the mountain already, right?" I grinned and kept rambling. It felt good to hear my own voice instead of just air. "If there was somebody else up there, you'll help me throw him off, right Cloud? I mean, a skinny old levitating guy can't put up that much of a fight against us too, unless he's sucking out our brains at the same time. Which would just be creepy. I think we need to rid the world of yogis, Cloud."  
  
Course he didn't move. I sighed and swung my feet away from the glass, tapping him on the back with the heel of my foot. No response, still. Cloud was so damned allergic to Mako, I guess, that it made him go schizophrenic. Or catatonic. Wasn't that a kind of schizophrenia? I completely forgot. I could feel the little bit of heat off his back with my foot and couldn't help but pull a face. We were probobly going to freeze to death in here at the rate they were letting us go. Or at least get sick. Being drowned in Mako was close enough to breathing mucas, maybe we'd get pnumonia. Owch, that would suck. These guys probobly wouldn't know what was wrong til I spit blood on them, too. Most of the kabuki shadows were about as intelligent as you'd expect a monkey trained to flick a lightswitch and press a button to be. You jump at them and they spaz and run six feet away screaming about 'acting out.' It wasn't like much could be done...  
  
"Hey, Cloud, wouldn't kill you to move or something. You're going to turn to stone if you stick like that forever. Either that or your ass is going to freeze to the floorplates. Hey, look on the bright side, they haven't done any really weird stuff since they put me in here with you. We probably set back their schedual a good couple weeks," I shook him with my foot. About the best reaction I got was him pulling his shoulders up a little more around his neck. I sighed...there really wasn't anything happening here. I didn't want to say something or think something that'd make him start screaming and thrashing around like before...but I was so tired of getting no response whatsoever. But...still...  
  
I felt Cloud's shoulders shake from under my foot, the muscles along his shoulderblades contracting in a little spasmodic shiver. I sat up and moved my feet off his back, watching silent for a moment...The shaking was irregular but I could hear him now too, the little rhythmic pant and gasp and strained sounds of someone who didn't want you to hear when they were crying, because it would make things worse. Damnit, I didn't know what I'd said but...I rolled over and crawled towards Cloud on my elbows, nudging against him with my shoulders. He waivered a little and his breathing changed slightly, but nothing else really. "Hey...C'mon. Cloud," I nudged him again and this time he shook his head and curled up tighter. At least I got something though. "Look, don't be like that. It's gonna be okay, Cloud. I promised I'd get us out of here and I'm gonna. Okay?"  
  
Another shiver ran over Cloud, his nails digging into the fabric that bunched around his curled up knees. At least it wasn't his skin, cause the way he was latching in there he looked more than ready to cause some damage to himself. Coiling my knees under myself and sitting up, I gripped Cloud's shoulder and gave it a little shake, just to let him know I was there. In the little bits of reflective light, the tears slithering down Cloud's cheeks reflected individually...trails of ice blue leading into his eyes and down towards his heart. Trying to connect outside to inside...or something equally metaphorical. Cloud tried to inhale and calm himself down, I guess, but it sounded ragged and shook his entire body like a miniature seizure. I moved my other arm around him and hugged against the shaking. He'd gotten so skinny so quick, even though he was eating. I might have too, but I think Cloud was worrying himself thin. Wrapped up shaking and crying like that he was so small...I could carry him out of here, couldn't I? All it would take was me to get myself out.   
  
Uncurling just long enough to latch against me into that vice grip I was starting to get used to and welcome, Cloud's tears started pooling against the skin on my arms and sliding down towards the grated floor, probobly gone into some Mako oblivion. A little while in the darkened round cell, it was all quiet. Without warning though, Cloud's nails dug into my skin and he pulled...not away, this time, but towards me, like he was trying to fold up inside who I was. There was a high pitched keening sound and I thought at first he might start to laugh...but it disolved almost instintaniously into strangled sounds of crying. What the hell was I supposed to do...He wanted to disappear, to get the hell out, and I couldn't even do that right now. The best I could do...was...  
  
Stroking evenly against Cloud's shaking shoulderblades, I rubbed his back and held back to his desperate clutching. There wasn't much else to do...I prefered this Cloud to the completely silent one, though. At least this Cloud knew what he was feeling inside. To me, something was nipping at the bottom of my heart, a little demon pixie dragon. Maybe if I had someone to lean on too, instead of having to be the unbreakable one, I'd feel the same way he did. I couldn't affourd to drop into a depression like Cloud's though. Not here, not now, not in this underground shop of sharp toys and sadistic children.   
  
There was a sputtering outside as the lights crackled to life, the flourecent slicing through the darkness with such violence I jerked back against Cloud in pain. Not much good, he dug his nails deeper and I had to swallow the yelp back down that would have escaped. He would probobly make me bleed if he kept latching into me like this but hell...he wouldn't have to know. Through gritted teeth, I made out at least one shape that didn't waltz out of kabuki playhouses. Think of the devil and he shall make a goddamn appearance, tapdancing across stage with a cane. Evil was always one for great entrances.   
  
Hojo moved in with a flank of two kabuki trainies, decked up in white. Extentions of him, arms maybe. Great...fuck me with a ten foot pole if these aren't contrived metaphors. At least he knew a thing or two about psychology.   
  
"Well, Zack my boy," The thinness of his eyes dug with little knifetips inside my mind. He didn't even have to narrow them to turn them that way. Preditorial eyes. I guess I must have looked yummy. "You've both had a rather long rest break...shall we begin the testing now? Do you feel...up to it?"  
  
I had a feeling if I did or not didn't really matter. "Hit me, Doc," I muttered through clenched teeth. "It can't be any worse than what I can invent on the inside."  
  
I thought I saw the ghost of a smile flicker on his face before Hojo walked away. I hoped to god I didn't, as the hiss of hydraulics filled the cell for the first time in two weeks. Shit, I hoped to the devil. It didn't seem like a god would dare stick their face in this place. It's hard to face up to failures. 


	14. Chapter 13

No, I'm thinking to myself as I'm watching the little fishbowl they keep us in decompress. No, I'm thinking, because I can hear the machines that hold us in here hissing in relief. No, while the stale air inside the tank leaked out and gasped like someone who was holding their breath. No, I thought and wanted to say out loud, I am _not_ ready to deal with you right now, Hojo. 

I've never been...treated so much like an object before. I can't say I don't deserve it, sometimes I treated people like objects too but so does everyone. But when I pulled out of Cloud's grip it was like pulling myself out of a shell I was holding on to. I stood, and he clawed and recoiled from the new air leaking through the open door, and I suddenly felt naked. Maybe it was just my body freaking out, I'd been in such close contact with him for so many days that it made sense, but that didn't make me feel any less alien to the air. It was cold outside the tank. Hell, it was cold inside but I guess I'd built myself the illusion I was warmer. This made my skin tingle, though. Prickle like one of those days in summer where you want to rip off your skin and run around as a skeleton, nothing but the air on your bones, but reversed. I wanted to be at the center of a ball, curled and compressed and not out on my own sleeve, where I was. 

I wish I hadn't said I was ready to step outside of that little glass bowl. It would have been easier to shake my head and pretend to go insane, or to withdraw like Cloud had. To put off whatever was about to come and chew me to peices. I didn't like the way the light reflected in here, fell from florecent strips on the ceiling and spread out like fog, it didn't touch anything but the doctor. Christ...I wanted to slap myself straight out, because I knew the next thought that was coming. _Playing God_ were not the words I wanted to hear right now. More like playing a little kid on a sidewalk with a magnifying glass, and I was the little ant he was chasing down the pavement. Help meee, help meee, and I'm frying under the intensified sunlight. Oh hell, I am stopping this tangent right now. 

"Don't look so nervous, Zack my boy," The assuring edge to his voice made me want to dive off a cliff. Yup. "This is the same as the examinations you go through in Soldier." 

So at least I'm getting to keep my skin on for today, literally. No, I'm not feeling jumpy at all. Well hell, anyone would. Look at the situation. I've been kept in a tube with a cracked blonde for a couple days, and how I'd gotten there was so blurred. I could have straightened it out in my mind if I tried, but there was a slight problem with trying to do that what went by the name of Cloud-Starting-To-Scream-And-Go-Crazy. That made it all the more frustrating because I knew given ten minutes of my own time I could remember. Everyone's had the feeling before, like having a weekend where you knew you had homework but didn't want to think about it and so you eventually couldn't if you wanted to. The longer Cloud stays high as a kite on Mako overdose the longer it's going to take me to straighten out what happened to us. 

The man didn't lie- the examinations were the same. Turn around, cough, poke your nose with this pencil, follow this light and prove you're otherwise a living breathing human being. That I have a pulse and a spine and reflexes and all that trivial stuff that I've been going through since kindergarten whenever you go to school the next year. Right down to the cold stainless steel table I had to sit on. Oh, wait, we didn't do that in school. That was for the vet. 

Even weirder, during the examination, Hojo talked. I wish he'd said something insulting or patronizing so I could have kicked him in the face during the whole knee-tap thingie. Or punched him when he was putting on the blood pressure cuff. But the psychopath was civil for a change. It was frightening really, because I was sitting here shivering like a short-haired dog thrown into a bathtub, looking for a chance to knock down one of the kabuki morons and bolt at any given chance, and he was making small talk. It felt inside out, and sick. Your stomach after you clean the bathroom floor for too long in a badly ventilated room, that's how it felt. Tinfoil rubbed on your skin when you have a fever. Anything just plain _wrong_. 

"Your pulse is a little fast, but that's expected..." Hojo ripped the cuff off my arm and pushed his glasses up on his face in a gesture that was so quick and must have been so reflexive it was barely noticable. It was like the man didn't even see the strands of hair that had gotten loose and flopped in his face. "How are you feeling otherwise, Zack my boy?" 

What, was I supposed to treat this like it was a normal checkup? I had been _held in a tank for several days_. Jesus christ, not to mention basted in Mako. But getting pissy with the only authority figure around probably wasn't going to get me out. It felt so weird to talk to him though. Like talking to your dog when your dog had just told you it'd prefer a nice veggie burger and perhaps some non caffinated cola in place of its kibble. "Sore..." It wasn't helping that the confusion and mixed-up-ness was leaking into what I was saying. "Kind of sick, a little mixed up." 

Hojo moved away, rumaging through the cabinets and drawers of the dim-lit room. I wanted to jump him, slap him around and run away. But I remembered the strength I'd felt when he twisted my arm. I wouldn't be surprised if the good doctor had infused himself with the same mako he was tenderly sopping us in. "That's to be expected," the man said without looking back at me. "It's most likely a result of slight malnutrition and overexposier to the Mako." Hojo's voice made itself into a little arch, probably the best it came to laughing between words was sneering them a little like this. "I'd be concerned if you weren't showing signs of that. However, I was thinking more in terms of mentally, my dear boy." 

_Peachy keen, put me in a dress, duct tape me to a traffic light and call me Shirley._ I didn't say that out loud. "Normal. For the Mako, I mean." 

The doctor nodded his head cooly, straightening and turning from his shelves, coming back towards me. Whatever he was looking for he hadn't found, because he brushed straight past as he talked and went on looking. "That's expected. As a specimin you're going to be quite boring, I'm afraid. Soldier did its job..." Oh cute throw that in there and remind me I'm your pet goldfish now and you have a tube of food colouring to drop in my water. "But you're still useful." 

"It's always good to be wanted," I flatlined. What a colossal prick. 

I think I jumped when the doctor actually laughed. It was one of those things that completely catches you off guard, because God, if there's one person who shouldn't be laughing it's him. The kind of laugh that makes you want to abruptly start inching towards the door. Not the cliche mad-scientist laugh you hear in the old black and whites, with the false lightning going on while someone off camera flicks the studio lights on and off. Genuine, real, creepy, out of nowhere and uncharictaristic laughter. Like a two year old glaring at you and telling you to go to hell in a serious, mature tone. One of those incompatables. It makes you want to crawl inside your head and coil up, hide inside yourself cause you're that shocked and scared by it. One of the kabuki aids put a hand towards my shoulder, I guess I looked ready to run. I jerked my arm away and shot a glare at the living dark. Hahahaha get the hell away from me. "What's so funny?" 

I should have guessed that the doctor wouldn't respond. But I don't think it would have been healthy if I'd guessed he'd be coming back with a syringe. I felt like I'd been hit with a high-speed fever that left my stomach inside out and all the blood running out of my skin and onto the floor. I hated injections, ever since I was a little kid. I was...okay with them. I didn't run screaming out of the room. I just never much liked the idea of a metal spike being wiggled inside my muscles and poking into my blood. It's like..here, hold on while science vomits inside you. It had always unbalanced me. 

And normally I wouldn't have felt so offset by it. But we're talking about the same man who had me and Cloud thrown in little goldfish bowls and tried to drown us with mako. I choked off whatever sound just tried to crawl out of my throat and left it with a sad little half-formed squeak. 

"Calm down, this is hardly something that could kill you." He checked the dosage, lay the thing down on the table next to me. I felt my nails bending against the metal edge as I tried to dig them into the table surface. One of the kabuki-workers grabbed my arm and pulled it out, scraping the inner elbow with a cotton swap. The sterelizing alcohol drew every little fleck of cold in the room and zapped the sensitive skin. I winced and tried not to think about what was coming. Tried to fit it into perspective. _You had a hundred injections in Soldier, Knightblade. You're used to it. It's not that bad. You know it's not._

"You'll have to excuse my previous behavior," I tried to stare straight ahead while Hojo spoke. "I'm just slightly put off, you see...my son was recently killed. I believe you knew him," His hand closed around my forearm. Left forearm. His left hand. Doctor's right handed. I had to calm down. "Sephiroth. Well, he will be missed." 

He wasn't wearing gloves. The clammyness of a human hand hit my skin like a lightning bolt down from the heavens and I started shaking. It shouldn't matter. But it did. 

"Zack my boy, are you afraid?" 

I was terrified. 

"Interesting." I felt the needle slithering in, pushing skin away around it and leaving that horriable unnatural tightness. Involutnarily my muscle clenched around the barb and everything screamed and leapt back. It hurt too much to keep wincing. Why was I thinking about it so much, why why _why_ couldn't I stop dwelling on that damned razor fine thread thin dragon wriggling into my body? 

And suddenly I thought of my room, back home, in Gongaga. Where I hadn't been for a few years. Just my things. And I hadn't written to my parents lately, they must be worried. And I was anywhere but here, and then, and I was thinking of Midgar and Aeris and the way she would smile and shake her head when I told her how much I hated checkups. She wasn't like a pixie but she wasn't like a Human. And I was anywhere but here. 

When I came back, my head was hurting. 

"That was slightly melodramatic, don't you think." The doctor arched his eyebrow at me, the loose strands of hair seperating his face into hemispheres. He glared over his glasses and I shook my head. I guess I was trying to rattle everything back into place. At least the needle was gone. I could feel its lingering shadow in my skin though. God I hated shots. And having a mad scientist give them to you made it all that much worse. 

So I grinned sickly at the doctor, trying to meet his glare somewhere at the angle he used to get over his specticles. "I've been having some interesting dreams, Doc. Maybe you'd like to hear them." 

I felt so very ill. 


	15. Chapter 14

This was the kind of nightmare I hated. Not just because it was a nightmare, and it was the kind with the slip-slidey reality that made my head hurt. Those were normal, because that's what nightmares did. It wasn't that these woke me up screaming, or in a cold sweat, or anything like that. I guess if you're going by conventional deffinition they really aren't scary at all. But for me it isn't how badly you want to pee your pants when you wake up that makes the nightmare. It's what goes on. 

I could see it in front of me, this animated carcass. It sure as hell wasn't anything human. Humanizing things lets our little brains wrap around them, that's why when people talk about monsters and gods they're always in a slightly humanoid shape. And you'd think we'd know better, with the things we've got running around in the plains. But we don't. And there was really no way to explain what this thing that kept slipping into my sleep was. It had deep colours. Silvers and blues, purples and slick sick reds. 

The dream doesn't start here. This is just where I am now. The dream starts like most dreams do, in a place you know. Like your house or school. In this case for me, it was back at the bottom of the mountain in Nibelheim. I mean honestly, this is the stupidest setting for a dream to take. I didn't know the town that well myself, so to have a dream there seems so bizzare. It's like, out of the blue. No reason! It always starts at night. 

In the dream, I see Cloud walking down the street, only it's not quite Cloud. Oh, it's him alright. It's just that he's not...entirely...there. It's hard to describe. Not like a ghost, but deffinitly not like something you can't see through. He doesn't see me yet at all, but that's because I'm watching him through the windows of one of the buildings. Cloud walks on the streets like he's looking for something, and lurks around the doorway of one building in particular. I know what it is, it's the place where Sephiroth, me, and that guide girl with the monstrous tatas got our picture taken. He ghosts around there just looking kind of left out. I guess he was. 

That's when the thing starts coming down. It decends off the mountain like some sort of cheesy movie shot of a banshee. It's all dripping and hung crooked, like a meathook is all that's keeping it in the air. The left shoulder always hangs higher than the right. There's no head, just this peeled down section where the red and silver start gashing in streaks. It looks like the entire lower half of it, if it were ever a person, was ripped off with ice picks. It's fucking gruesome, rabid, and I have to keep my tongue pressed tight between my teeth to keep from puking. 

The thing's got massive tatas too, and I'm wondering if this is some sort of metaphor for the girl. That'd be too far into it, I guess. It's not like her head was cut off, at least I don't think so. I'm still fuzzy there, a damaged file or something like that. So it might be human, or it might have been at some point. That's when it starts twitching and scratching inward like someone took a piece of film and started freeze framing it and editing it badly. That's when it starts changing and heading for Cloud. 

He never sees it coming. When it looses any recognition, and just becomes this hung thing in the air, he always has his back turned and his hand in the air. Three fingertips are always outstretched, touching grooves in the masonry. It, the thing, starts dripping down. The torn up peices dangling from it lengthen out, like they're melting. But they're not. They lift up, but bad and jiggly like a five year old with a marionette. 

And I hear it hissing, heavy static, filling up the air. But Cloud still doesn't turn around. 

That's when I always come bursting out the door of the house I was in. Just the same, Cloud never sees this. His back stays turned the whole time. I think he might be building himself a world inside his dreams. When my feet hit the ground I realize I'm no more substantial than either of them, and sometimes by now the sun's coming up. If it is, the Professor always wakes me around here, and then Cloud, and nothing happens. 

But if he doesn't, it starts to get bad. 

And tonight, he hasn't, because in the dream world it's black as pitch with no moon. 

It would be easier to swallow this dream, if I knew that in waking I had no control over it. Just a reoccuring dream, as ironic as it is. It would be so much easier if that was the case. But it isn't. Because once I get to here in the dream, it's all my choice. I know I can choose to wait in the house and let Cloud be taken by the thing. I never do, because for god's sakes! Look at that thing! It's probably going to jam itself into his orfices and make him some sort of mindless slave or something. And despite what some people say about me, this IS a nightmare. 

And so since it's my choice, I have the option of saying something different every time. And I usually do. The problem isn't that this changes the dream. The problem is that the thing has seemed to remember me these past few nights. And I don't like what it's been talking about. 

So here I go again, bursting out the door with Cloud completely oblivious and into the middle of the street. The thing drifts closer, and now it looks like a pair of hands with a tied tight around them as the fingers move now. See what I mean about humanizing? I'm still doing it. "Why don't you just leave him alone, damnit?!" 

When the thing talks, it's like someone took static and molded it into words. I _do not like_ the Thing's voice. I'd probably like it a little more if it wasn't always so... self driven. "You again." 

"Hey, I told you before, whatever you are you can piss off." I reach a hand behind me for the buster sword this time. For a minute, my hand closes on air. I start flexing my fingers in panic, because for christ's sakes. The first time in one of these dreams I reach for my weapon, it isn't there. Then it's there- the sword's there suddenly and I'm not going to argue, so I draw. The thing changes direction away from Oblivious Cloud and starts heading towards me. I turn the flat horizontal, glare at it. "So let's not have to go through this every time." 

"We can always resume last night's convesation." It keeps floating towards me. This is the closest it's gotten so far. 

"For the love of god, last night was some babble about reincarnation. I'm not some fucking fruity wizard, and I refuse to believe my subconcious is telling me so." I'm tired and cynical. It's showing again. Damn. 

I could swear to god the blast of static noise it's sending at me is supposed to be a sigh. God I hate this thing. "If you're unwilling to accept now, I suppose it's futile to try. You'll realize soon enough." 

I wouldn't mind this floating death-monkey nearly as much if it didn't talk like a froofy new-age bible thumper. "Can it. Why do you want Cloud?" 

"Shouldn't it be obvious? I need a knight." 

"Cloud's a little blonde pouf, not a knight." Okay, now I'm sure you're thinking there's some massive metaphor here. This disembodied floating dream shape is asking for a knight. That I've got some great grand theory that it's really good, and Cloud's really something so much more than he really is. But guess what. You're wrong. I _know_ this shape, I've been the one talking to it for nights now. Not you. And I _know_ what it's saying is complete bull. This thing, this meat tenticle hook bleedy float monster, is a glutton for attention. This is just another of it's little games. 

"I am a sorceress-" 

"You're a floating meat slab in my dreams." 

"And a sorceress needs a knight." 

"That is such crap." And it is. I know materia users. I work with them. Not a damn _one_ of them, especially the females, 'needs' a knight. 

"So vulgar. Where are you now, Zack?" It starts slithering closer through the air, and I take a slow easy fighting stance. If it's just as unreal as I am, I should be able to hurt it just fine. 

Where am I though? What kind of question is that? "Back off Cloud, whatever you were going to do to him."

"I was only going to do....this..." And there's a feeling of fingers being jabbed down my throat. I gag, because I can't help it and I'm still human. Coughing and gagging, I slash at the air in front of me where a hand might be, but nothing happens. Tears start collecting from the abuse on the edges of my lashes, I can see them when I blink. 

There's really only one option now, so I suck in as big a breath as I can. It feels like the fingers fall down into my stomach, and now there's just an arm jabbed into my throat, but I have to cope instead of throw up. So I run best I can. There's a scratching sound like old rotten fabric tearing and then this horriable static scream in my head. It's like someone's ripped the inside of my stomach out, because the feeling withdraws rough and clawing. I go off balance and hit the ground, the flat of the buster clatters when it hits the cobblestones. Then, I start to actually throw up. I can feel it sliding out of my throat, but can't see anything. It burns where the fingers of that thing ripped, but I honestly don't give a damn. Right now, I can hear it screaming at the top of it's non existant vocal chords behind me. 

Lie still...take it easy... I take time to get in breaths. They taste cold, and slick, but it's air. That's all that matters. 

When I'm ready to go again, when I get my feet under me and get up again, it's still screaming. Fantastic sound it's got going there. Lucky for me after an invisable puke, I've sort of begun to tune it out. I pick up my sword from the cobblestones, and it's covered in this thick coagulated purple iccor. I guess I had hit it after all. Good, I hated it even more now that I knew it was only going to try some lame cliche tenticle sex move. 

Nobody was going to abuse Cloud while I was watching. Not if I could stop them. 

"You..." It's voice choked in my head. Lying on the pavement, it wasn't moving much. Just a few little flaps of flesh that trickled back and forth. Still just as disgusting as before...More now that I knew it's intentions. "You're a knight too, you see. You need a sorceress to serve. Maybe-" 

"Maybe it's you. That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?" I was pretty sure you couldn't die here. If you couldn't really throw up here, you probably couldn't die. But it was deffinitly worth trying. "I'm not in the market to serve anyone, especially you. I _take care_ of my friends." 

It hissed again. "I can be-" 

I didn't wait for it to finish. The buster swung up and behind my head, and waited there. I knew this thing couldn't exactly see me. It didn't have eyes after all. But I wanted it to know. To know that you didn't try to fuck with my mind, that I wasn't some moron who would fall for any easy answer. "You're not my friend." 

I brought down the blade. 

It all disappeared. 

"Zack, my boy, you were hitting R.E.M." 

And it wasn't morning, but now I was awake. God only really knew what time it was, but I was being woken up now. When I opened my eyes, the florucent lights hit like an arrow, and I locked them back down again. God, how many times would I go through this? I mean it was bad enough that the damn nightmare kept happening over and over. 

"So, what were they this time?" 

It was my own stupid fault. I shouldn't have started to tell Hojo about the dreams, because now I was laid out like a slab of meat on the table and hooked up to god knows how many things. I could feel the hair thin needles pressed just under my skin in too many places for me to feel sick about each individually. I just felt wholely ill all at once. 

Thought hit me right about then. You could say it was a no brainer. Or you could say it was paranoia. Depends if anyone else thinks my dreams are more than a dream besides me. But I bolted upright. "Cloud! Find Cloud!" 

Then I was doubled over like someone hit me in the back of the head with a frying pan, and clenching my stomach with about fifteen needles all being yanked out of my flesh. I probably would have thrown up, but from the looks of it, I had already while dreaming. Faaaantastic. 

"Lie down, he's fine." The professor peered at me over the rims of his specticals and wrote something on the clipboard he had hung on the wall. This is why I hate the doctor. Because he's so damned condecending. Well, that, and the fact that he kidnapped us off the street and locked us in giant fishtanks filled with glowy green posion. 

"No, you've got to pay attention," My voice was quivering, probably because I was about two minutes away from the last stop before cookie-tossville. "These aren't just dreams, they're ...they're something else, for hell's sake, _get Cloud_." 

"Pushy, too." The professor muttered and took down his clipboard, but did absolutely nothing. I was about ready to jump off the table and jam it down his throat, except that if I'd even attempted to jump I'd probably fall over twitching from the nausea. Horray for weak states! "Now tell me what you saw." All buisness this time. All science. Arg. 

I wasn't going to give up yet. "I saw Cloud in trouble, so-" 

"What was threatening him." Cut off. 

"This big thing, I don't know what it was!" 

"Describe it." 

"How the hell do you describe stuff like that? It was all purple and silver and dripping flesh." 

"Was it a woman?" 

"No, it was just a _thing_, I told you! You can't describe things like that." 

"What was it doing?" 

"Fuck you!" 

The clipboard came down against the metal rim of the examination table with a crack that split the air down the middle. I jumped, a few more needles inching out and sending my stomach into a sideways lurch. The professor glared with dangerous intensity, more hair working free of the ponytail and strangling his facial order. It looked like he hadn't showered in days, I could see now. The look on his face wasn't the look of a man you wanted to be fighting with...not right now. Unless you were raving insane, which I wasn't. Although I'm pretty sure I'm breaking a rule there. It seems like being tied to a table with needles stuck in you should make you want to be insan- 

"I am not," He'd interupted my train of thought. Why could everyone do that to me? "In the mood to play games, Knightblade." 

So that was it, and that was how it was being played. I guess it should have crossed my mind earlier. Gee, I was just too pissed about _not being able to kill the dream demon_ I guess. "Wasn't like it was a level playing field anyway." 

"What was it doing?" It really bothered me that he could just draw back like he did, completely calm, and go right back to the questions. There was just something not natural about that. 

"It was going after Cloud, now will you get him and make sure he's alright?" I tried to keep my voice down in the same low tones Hojo used. Maybe if I kept a level head and didn't swear like a middle schooler throwing a temper tantrum I'd get what I wanted. It wasn't likely, but at least this way I wouldn't get the good Professor's face shoved in front of me again. Yeech. 

"Yes yes, in a moment...Facinating..." Hojo leaned close to the clipboard when he wrote. I had the feeling that if I looked at it, I wouldn't understand a damn thing that was being put down. And I wouldn't be surprised if I found stick figure comics of him torturing us either. This man was nuts. "And what was it doing to him?" 

"It didn't do anything to him, not while I was in there. Because I stopped it." 

"_You_ stopped it? How in the hell did you do that, boy?" 

By running at it with a sword and a bad attitude, how else do you stop monsters? They don't exactly listen when you call their names and ask them to not attack. I had the irking little feeling this guy was the kind of kid who hung around inside all day and played with toy cars on the rug, thinking of disecting the cat. When I started talking again, my hand was on my forehead. Because this was going nowhere, and Cloud was still in the dream. At least I think he was. And that thing could get him there, now that I was gone. "I attacked it. But you stopped me before I could kill it so _please_ wake up the blonde." 

"You tried to kill her?" I didn't expect this response. Hojo's hands slipped off the clipboard and it hit the floor with a sharp snapping sound, and echoed off the stone walls. It was like the sound of someone's face being slapped, only less fleshy. 

I was going to say something along the lines of 'yes' or 'it was after cloud' or something else stoic and noble. But quite frankly, I was pissed off, and tired, and Hojo, for someone who was doing all this science stuff, was acting really naive. "Duh." 

The professor's hands started shaking, and moving like spiders up towards his hair. He probably used the emergency eye flush in the lab to wash himself. In his cloths. Eugh. Agh. EHGHGAH. I wanted to slap myself but the feeling of those little needles ripping out wasn't something I felt like reliving. 

"Get out of here." Well, scratch that idea. Before I could say anything or start inching the metal probisci out of my skin, Hojo began to circle the table like a hawk, collecting the wires into bundles in his hands and ripping them out all at once. I screamed every time, and twisted away from the pain, but there really wasn't any point. He was going to inflict as much pain on me in doing this as he could. Every new tearing waited just long enough for me to start to recover before it started. So when he was done, I was hung over the edge of the examination table limply, little tiny beads of blood welling up all over my skin. 

He wasn't very gentle in getting me off the table either. Before I had time to put my feet on the floor, Hojo's slick sweaty hands were against my shoulder blades pushing. I didn't even have time to say anything before I was pushed over the side, hitting the floor rough elbow-first and jolting pain up my arm. Jesus h. Christ and all three incarnations of Bahamut, that HURT. It felt wired, twisted, and deffinitly not right. But Hojo didn't seem too concerned with my arm and just began kicking me with his old sneakers, scrambling to make me move. I could see the shoes every time before they came swinging into my side. They were in better shape than the rest of him, although now they had little smearings of my blood in diamond shapes on the very tip. I wasn't bleeding very much, that was good. But the professor was still kicking me in the _god damned side_ and that was _bad._ I did my best to crawl away, which sadly wasn't much. I was still sick to my stomach and now had someone kicking me on top of that. 

Really, I probably could have gotten away like Hojo wanted much faster if he would just stop kicking me. 

When I did dig my nails into the morter on the floor enough to start dragging away from the foot that was quite successfully pinning me to the side of the table, despite what the professor said he would like for me to do, I managed to pull a good three feet forward before getting my good elbow under me. Making a limping crawl for the opposite end of the room, I could hear the professor behind me clattering around and making these bizzare mewling sounds. I really wasn't interested on how bad my dream made him feel. I was interested in the tanks, drained, lined up against the wall I was limp-crawling for. 

Curled like a shrimp in the bottom of the tank on the left was Cloud, asleep, and kicking. Unless he was chasing squirrels in his dreams, I had a sick sensation I knew what was going on. Or maybe it was the nausea from the needles, but I was willing to go with my hunch instead. It took me less time to pull myself upright against the tank without vomiting than it had to get across the floor, which was kind of ironic in a very sick sort of way. 

"Cloud, wake up, get up!" I kicked against the base of the tank with my bare foot, but it didn't make more than a low thudding sound that probably wouldn't have woken a paranoid mouse. It took a few minutes of staring and helpless clawing with the hand I hadn't landed on before I figured out how the tanks themselves opened. It was a pretty simple system, but in my case it would hurt like hell to open. "Cloud!" No option, though. He was still twitching badly, and not waking up. 

I took a deep breath before closing both hands on the latch. I thought of cool things, like hiking in mountains and going camping in october. I thought of anything that could work as mind over matter for the incoming wave of new sickness. Because then I put my injured arm to work, and twisted the hatch open. 

It was a horriable sensation. Like instead of going down my throat this time, the dream demon had gone into my stomach through my arm. I felt my eyes roll back into my head until it made me dizzy, and sucked in air like a man who nearly drowned. It did enough. The hatch yeilded, hissed angrily with depressurization and swung open, and rather than stand around outside or pull Cloud out here with me where the crazy professor was still rampageing back by his little table, I dove inside and swung it shut behind me. 

When the sound of the hydarulics hissing closed filled the air, it suddenly occured to me that this might not have been the best idea. Priority wasn't being out of the tank though, it was waking up Cloud before that dream demon could do something to him too. And I did that the best way you can, when you're weak and nausous and off balance. 

I fell on him. 

Let me tell you, there's no spastic awakening like that of someone who's just been landed on. Cloud made it especially dramatic, however, by twisting to the side in a way that could only be spine-wrenchingly painful and coughing a thick, wet cough that sounded like he was about to hack up a slug. I rolled off of him as quickly as I could at seeing that and patted the blonde between his shoulder blades, trying to help whatever was caught in his throat to escape. 

Although I had a sort of ill slinking suspicion I knew what it was. 

"Come on, get it out of you. It's okay," Between patting Cloud, who was now gasping for breath and coughing hard enough that his eyes were tearing at the edges, I rubbed his back. It was something you learned to do when you were about ten, probably from your parents, and didn't use again until you were in your mid-late teens having one of those stupid rebellious streaks. But this wasn't a fever in second grade or a hangover in high school. 

"It's....She...stuck..." Cloud's gagging and gasping made halted his words badly, but he was trying to tell me. Good thing I already knew, or else his half pantomiming towards the bottom of the tank wouldn't have meant a damn thing to me. 

"It's okay, I know. I got here as quick as I could. You okay?" It was a stupid question. But good thing I asked, because Cloud started shaking his head violently, the fits still going on and not getting any better. 

His fingers clawed at the underside of his neck and down towards his chest. No words were forming now, but I knew. Christ, I knew, because this was exactly what that thing had done to me. Only I'd gotten it out of me. And here I had a feeling it would take more than waving at the air in front of Cloud's face to get him breathing again. 

He was going to die, if that stupid flying meat slab from my dreams knew anything. And he couldn't do anything if he was dead. Some omipotent sorceress. But I knew. "Cloud, hold still." I grabbed the blonde by his shoulders and rolled him over, pinning him down to the floor. The eyes staring at me were filmy with tears and panicked. No time though to explain or reassure. 

I pried Cloud's mouth open with one hand, and snaked my fingers in. His tongue was tensed up into a little curl from panic and coughing, but it was doing him no good in getting this thing out. So I flattened it down with my knuckles and stretched my fingers further back. 

The gag reflex in a human throat is strong. If you've ever had your tonsels swabbed at the doctor's, you know how quickly you start coughing and gagging. Well, your throat also contracts. And Cloud's throat was contracting around my hand. The downside to this sensation besides having a slimed hand and gagging friend, was that it meant they were choking. 

A human can go about two minutes without air, at least I think so. That was the mark I was looking to not reach. I knew my hand wouldn't reach all the way down Cloud's throat but I hoped the demon dream creature hadn't gotten that far. 

My index finger stretched down his throat, where I could feel it twitching and tightening trying to throw me out. Nothing doing, Cloud, I'm going to save you even if your body doesn't want to. I kept my eyes closed the entire time. I didn't want to see his face, I didn't want to know any more than I had to that this was hurting him. 

Something sticky touched my fingertips. Something entirely unlike the interior of a throat. Cloud was clawing at me now, but I'd gotten to it. Good thing too, I could feel this thing writhing just the same as his throat was contracting, trying to worm its way further down. No way, you disgusting peice of plane-shifting scum. I pinched two fingers together overtop of it, but the object recoiled and slipped out. Cloud made a muffled scream that I could feel vibrate his throat around my hand. Hold still just a second longer...please.... 

Three fingers this time, pinching like one of those rip off claw machines only with more spring power. There! I got it, and pulled. It fought. This thing, whatever it was, wanted to get down inside Cloud. I gritted my teeth and kept at it, because I was bigger and I was determined. "Get out of him you peice of shit..." 

It let go. 

Cloud was gagging so hard that bile was coming out now, and I honestly didn't envy him the pain it must be causing on the raw inside of his throat. My hand was covered in saliva, but that wasn't important. I threw the chunk of creature against the wall of the tank where it stuck, and scrambled closer to Cloud. 

He was retching now, but nothing was coming out anymore. I closed my arms around his waste and put my cheek against his back. I could feel him panting for breath now, but at least he was getting it. The air moving in and out of his lungs made a ragged sound through his ribcage that I could hear. For a moment, there was only the wicked silence of breathing. Then Cloud looked up and leaned back, more in a sick daze than anything. 

"That's hers." 

He was staring blankly at the peice of flesh that was now sliding down the side of the tank, leaving a long streak of discolouration. It was dead, now, I was pretty sure. But it was deffinitly part of the dream demon. The same pale silver purple flesh with the same icor. 

"I didn't think she could get you here." 

Cloud shook his head and inched backwards, further against me. He was afraid. I was too. "I didn't even know what it was until now. I didn't know you knew, that she was visiting you too." 

"She never got you before because I always got her attention. And I would have killed her this time." I couldn't hide the distaste in my voice. I hated what that thing was, that thing from my dreams, and everything it talked about. It was false, fake, a complete fraud that sent me into a fury. Not just because she wanted to manipulate me. But because she wanted Cloud too, and from the sound and look of it, already had Hojo. 

"I would never have guessed," Cloud's breathing was still erratic, like someone recovering from a bad cold. "That it was going to do that to me. I thought she was going to help. I really thought-" 

"I guess it isn't just a dream that we need to worry about. I wonder what it wants." This bothered me. It got Cloud when he was sleeping, it tried to get me...We couldn't spend our nights forced awake, Hojo would probably start giving us sleeping pills now that he knew what I was dreaming about. Something to knock us out and keep us knocked out even in our dreams. "Hell." 

"It said it's name was Jenova." Cloud was misty, far away, and this was the first time he'd been talking sane since we'd gotten here. It was depressing that he had almost died in order to do that. 

"Cloud, we can't avoid sleep. It's going to get us another way if it really wants us, because it already proved it can get you. It's like some goddamn twelve year old who refuses to take no for an answer. We've got to get it." The peice of it had reached the bottom of the tank now, and lay there turning more grey as time progressed. I hoped it hurt the dream demon. I hoped it hurt enough that it screamed all the way up there on the mountain where it came from. "You can fight, can't you?" 

Cloud nodded, still transfixed on the dead thing. I don't think I could blame him. If something like that had been pulled out of my throat, I'd be in a state of shock too. 

"Then next time it comes after us, we'll work together." Outside the tank, Hojo was screaming and throwing things across the lab. I could hear them shatter on the floor, muted through our prision. "Next time we're going to kill her, Cloud. So she can't get to any of us." 

Cloud was silent a long time after that. There was only the sound of the professor going ballistic. His hands moved up against his face, the blonde curling together into a fetal position. Still holding onto him, I was pulled along. I rested against his shoulderblades, feeling sick and exhausted, and could hear his voice echoed when it came up out of his body. 

"I hate them all." 


End file.
